


these bones never rested while living

by contrequirose



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (most of them), (s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Background Pumat Sol/Caduceus Clay, Curtain Fic, Disabled Character, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Mollymauk Tealeaf Lives, Multi, Narcolepsy, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Trans Character, background beaujester - Freeform, canon divergent off of episode 24, elven medical systems: a treatise, heavy on the, how much worldbuilding can i put into a fic: the novel, this is heavy on the recovery from pretty heavy events, watch this, you thought blumenkrew was a rare pair? you are like a silly baby
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:49:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23748628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contrequirose/pseuds/contrequirose
Summary: In the northern valleys of the Menagerie Coast, there is a city of towering wood and gold, called Gwardan. A day and a half's journey from that city, is a town - barely large enough to be called that - called Melegryn. And an hour's walk from that town, nestled squarely between the river and forest, is a farm.You can probably guess who lives on that farm.(Farming au, canon divergent after episode 25, heavy focus on recovering from trauma and found family. After all, what's sexier than wizards? Wizards on a farm.)
Relationships: Astrid/Eodwulf/Caleb Widogast/Essek Thelyss, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 56
Kudos: 117





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> just so you don't get too confused: caleb and nott left the nein before the nein reached shadycreek run and yasha/jester/fjord were kidnapped.

The cart that they had managed to scrape up enough funds for – and that was all the way back in Alfield, what feels like years even though he knows it’s only been months– is falling apart beneath them.

It’s been raining for three days straight.

They have enough rations for maybe – another three days, if he skimps on his and passes the rest off to Luc. More, maybe, if Astrid and Wulf skimp on theirs as well, but they really can’t afford it, not now, not ever, but especially not now.

He has no idea where they are, or where the nearest town is.

He knows which way is north, though.

Ha.

Useless.

“Caleb?” Nott’s voice snaps him out of his musings, and he flinches, slightly.

“Sorry – sorry, you were just zoning out for a while.” She traces a circle on the wood beneath her hand, where she’s leaning against the wall of the cart, and sighs. “Do you think we can stop, soon? Luc’s about to fall asleep.”

He glances back and –

Luc blinks back at him, eyes at half mast and hands lazily pushing some marbles around in the back of the cart. He gives him a small smile, and Luc waves a small hand back. Essek’s curled up next to him, staring blearily into space, a book open on his lap. It’s only the four of them, in the back of the cart, right now.

(He hasn’t heard the pages turn in over an hour. He’s not sure if that was because he’s been floating, or because Essek is as well. Mentally, he means. He wouldn’t need to float if he’s sitting, that would just be silly.)

(Shut _up_ , he tells his brain, and tries to focus enough to respond.)

“ _Ja,_ we can stop soon. It’s almost sunset, anyways.”

He stretches to crack where his knees had stiffened up, and lifts up the tarp to talk to Yeza.

Yeza’s been driving for about an hour – they’ve been taking shifts, so that somebody was always in the cart to watch Luc, and in this rain they’ve kept it to three people (and Luc) in the cart, three people outside – and he looks drenched, hood tucked tight over his head and hands clenched around the reins. Astrid and Wulf, dragging themselves alongside the horse, are drenched as well, Eodwulf quietly humming a marching song under his breath. The horse isn’t quite strong enough to pull them all along in the cart, so they alternate who has to walk.

(They have to move slowly, ever so slowly, because none of them have the stamina to walk for hours upon hours, not with the injuries they’ve taken, but they are managing. Somehow.)

“Yeza –“ he starts, and watches as Yeza goes, “Eep!” and turns to face him, “- do you want to find a good place to stop, for the night? Luc’s about to drop off.”

“Sure, sure, sure – there’s a little dip, over there, could that work?” He motions with his chin towards a small clearing that Caleb can just spot through the rain, and that – that’s fine.

The bubble will make it more fine.

“ _Ja_ , that will be fine.”

He hesitates, for a second, and then calls out to Astrid. “ _Sassa,_ we’ll be stopping soon. Just a bit longer.”

She pats Eodwulf’s shoulder in response, and gives him a nod. Any words she says in return are lost in the pouring of the rain against the tarp.

He ducks back beneath the cart, and nods to Nott.

She flashes a quick smile at him, and in a few minutes they can feel the cart slow to a stop.

Yeza sits back underneath the tarp in the cart, Astrid and Wulf climbing in as well, the wood of the cart groaning at their weight but holding steady.

Caleb hops out to walk the slow circle that will form the bubble to protect them for the night. He fits the cart and horse under it, as well – no need to leave her out in the cold – and knocks on the side of the cart when he’s done. Nott, Yeza, and Luc all come scrambling out, and they make camp on the slightly muddy floor beneath the bubble and beneath the cart. Astrid and Wulf stumble in from the rain a few minutes later after walking a perimeter, and a bleary eyed Essek follows them. They lay out tarps on the ground to protect from the mud, and then get the bedrolls arranged in short order. It’s a tight fit, all of them in here, but the fact that Essek rarely leaves hand-holding distance from Eodwulf makes it easier to fit them all in.

The fact that they all tend towards huddling together in a mass of bodies for heat and comfort helps, as well.

Luc falls asleep almost immediately after getting some food in him, and after a quick glance to Caleb – and he nods, he will take the first watch – Nott settles herself at his side and follows him.

Yeza smiles at her, just a quick quirk of his lips, and he nestles himself into Luc on the other side and slips into slumber.

“Do you want a partner for watch, Br – sorry, Caleb?” Astrid reaches up and starts unpeeling her waterlogged woolen hood from her hair, shivering slightly and then relaxing as Eodwulf’s cantrip dries the cloth.

“No, no, get some rest. You were walking for a while.” He pats her knee, awkwardly.

“You sure? I can stay –“ Eodwulf’s words are interrupted by a massive yawn, and he blinks. “On second thought. Maybe not. Um – Essie, you up for staying awake –“

Essek is rocking, slowly, in a steady waver of back and forth, exhaustion digging pits beneath his eyes. “Unless we miraculously got more powders for my potions,” he says, slowly, and yawns into his hand, “I’m afraid I’ll be rather useless. Sorry.” He sounds sincere, and Caleb’s already shaking his head.

“It’s fine, I said it’s fine. I’ll switch with Nott a little later, _ja_?” He presses a tentative kiss to Essek’s hand, and watches as the drow blushes, dark blue rushing to his cheeks. “Get some rest.”

They’ve been traveling hard for months now, on their rush to get out from the watch of the Empire, from the Dynasty.

Nott had confided in him, about her past, her family and her husband and her child and her death, a month into their return to solo travel after leaving the Nein.

He doesn’t regret leaving them. He was putting them all in danger.

But he misses them, maybe.

Just a little.

(That’s a lie, his brain tells him. He misses them so much, and it doesn’t matter, because he left. He clenches a fist in his lap.)

(Wait was that – no, just a mouse. He drops the burn of fire in his palm, and breathes.)

Anyways.

She had told him, about her past, about how she –

How she died.

Because they had been nearing Felderwin, and then he had gone to seek out Yeza and see if he and Luc were alright on her behalf, and then.

He digs his nails into his palm.

There had been archmages, in the town. Forcing Yeza to work on – on what seemed to be another dodecahedron. A beacon, he knows now.

He had recognized the mages. Knew them, and their connections all too well.

He had panicked.

And the night that they had arrived in town, he and Nott had snuck into the house that she used to live in, and reunited with Yeza and Luc, and slipped away before sunrise. He had to magic both of the archmages unconscious, and he still isn’t sure how he had done it. The night is a blurred mess of fire and rage and panic in his mind. Of Nott’s hand in his own, Luc on his back, Yeza on his other side as they ran.

They’ve been running, ever since. Went through Alfield and Trostenwald, and then twards Xhorhas, first, because he figured – they could disappear in the wastes, find some life away from the Empire’s eyes, but they had ran into people fleeing the opposite direction two months after escaping Felderwin.

It had shook him to his core, spotting Astrid and Eodwulf limp alongside a drow, in that mountain pass. He had thought, for a long moment, that it was over. That the hunters had finally caught up to the prey.

But it wasn’t like that. Wasn’t like that at all.

They, he had figured out, when Astrid had broken into hysterical sobs at the sight of his face, were not hunting at all, but rather also the hunted. In the end, they were all running from the same thing.

It takes hours to work out the story, but he’s still – in awe of what they had managed to do.

Tricked the governments into finding peace. Manipulated the Assembly into giving up some of their power.

Astrid – smart, incredible, terrifying Astrid – had poisoned Ikithon for years, looking for power, and when she had stumbled into the stray path of a greater restoration and learned the truth –

Ikithon died a month ago, she tells him, face breaking into fangs and teeth and a ghostly grin.

She became the wolf, and she guarded the sheep.

(He thinks of Astrid in Ikithon’s white robes, and throws up, then and there, while she talks. Eodwulf rubs his back.)

She guarded the people, she says, rubbing her eyes. Shook off suspicion from the Assembly, from Dwendal, and worked with the Dynasty to create peace.

(Essek – the drow, he learns – had been working with the Assembly as a spy into the Dynasty for years, from before he was an adult to now. Had grown exhausted of it. Had been manipulated and blackmailed into staying, at the risk of his own health.

Essek, the drow, who had been captured and blamed and kept after, he realizes with growing horror, the halfling working on the beacon in Felderwin had disappeared. Essek, who had been tortured, and experimented on, for sixty days.

Essek, who Astrid and Wulf explain, has no home to go to anymore, no country to find solace in. Essek, who they’ve adopted as family, now.

Essek, he learns, is easy to love.)

They finished peace talks a week and a half ago, and had faked Ikithon’s real death. Worked with the rest of the network of scourgers, to put someone new in power – Someone named Lena, he learns, who he vaguely remembers as older, hair the color of snow and ice – who cares more about keeping children and the empire safe than keeping power for herself, who can be cruel but who they trust. Someone who will keep the Assembly in line.

And they ran, Essek in tow. Ended up stranded in Xhorhas, after a teleportation gone wrong, and had been trekking back through the mountains for days of endless walking (and, well, floating on Essek’s part, but two months of torture and malnutrition had broken the drow’s will and magic into barely enough to keep him aloft.)

He had cried, that night, surrounded by people he’s in love with, people he loves, and the future had felt less black and terrifying.

And then they had gotten through the Wuyun gates, and then out of the Empire, out of the Dynasty -

And now he has no clue where in the Menagerie Coast they are, other than a few week’s journey from Port Damali.

They hadn’t stopped, really, at any of the larger cities along the way. They stopped at the outskirts of Feolinn and Tussoa, briefly, just to get food and supplies, a new wheel for the wagon, but anywhere larger had been to terrifying to show their faces in, too much to try and deal with.

He tightens his fist, and snaps Frumpkin onto his lap to distract him from following that thread too far.

He doesn’t see anything on his watch.

That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing there, but he can’t. He can’t -

He can’t think about that too hard, or he’s never going to get to sleep once he –

Oh.

Its time for him to wake Nott up.

He does so, and she blinks her bright yellow eyes awake, catching the faint light from his cantrip in the dark and turning into pools of gold.

She pats him, once, on the head, and then scrambles to sit up on top of the cart and keep watch. She’s stuck in that form, still. He doesn’t know how he’s going to fix it. He will, he has to, but right now he just… he doesn’t know. Isn’t strong enough for that kind of magic.

He lies down, next to Luc, and Yeza, and the rest of their rag-tag family, and tries his best to not think of the horrors that could be lurking in the dark, of the mages finding them, of the Assembly finding them, gods, what was he thinking getting so close to other people, this is exactly why he left, he needs to leave he needs to leave he’s putting them in danger, _scheisse_ –

Luc, next to him, rolls over and grabs a fistful of Caleb’s shirt, still asleep.

That –

That is why.

He has not known Luc and Yeza for long, but they are Nott’s family, and he is Nott’s family, and that makes them his family too, in a way. They are all family, now.

Frumpkin nudges himself into his chest, and he falls asleep surrounding by his cat’s soft breathing and Yeza’s less soft snoring.

Nott shakes him awake, in the morning –

Eight am, the back of his mind whispers –

And they pack up and return to the cart.

He takes the reins, this time, Frumpkin settles next to him on the bench.

He still has no real idea where they are.

They’re following a road, and it’s decently well traveled, even though they haven’t spotted anyone else, which is slightly concerning, but probably fine, and there’s a throwing star sunk into the mud, over there –

Wait.

No, not a throwing star, just a bit of scrap metal, probably from a wagon wheel that had busted there.

Hm.

He rubs his fingers against the thin leather of the reins, and tries to focus back in on the road ahead.

It’s –

It’s been difficult, lately, to keep his focus and keep his mind from slipping off its tracks and into the pit that are his memories.

He hasn’t –

It hasn’t been this bad in a while.

Since –

Since right when he met Nott, probably.

They had been fighting a group of bandits on their way out of the empire, terrible, terrible people, they had almost gotten away with Luc and Nott had been screaming, and he had used his fire and watched them burn –

He had gone fuzzy, for awhile, and.

Nott had told him later that the bandits had a caster with them, and that he had gotten hit with something, and that he had been screaming. It had taken almost a week for him to stop crying, a week of hiding desperately in a cave with Astrid and Eodwulf holding his hands, Essek mashing his rations together to make sure he could actually hold something down.

He doesn’t – he doesn’t remember, what happened, but it hadn’t been like how it usually was, when he lost himself in the fog of memories – it had been more like he was reliving all the worst parts of the academy all at once, crystals in his arms and false memories in his brain, Eodwulf screaming as he took a knife to the gut in training, Astrid crying after a mission, hands touching and pain, so much _pain_ –

He isn’t.

The cart is stopped.

Why are they stopped.

What is –

Hand on his arm.

“-leb, hey, you need to stop scratching at the bandages, you’re going to hurt yourself –“

Who.

What is happening.

Something soft pushes itself into his hand, and on a reflex, he stops the repetitive motions in favor of scratching it’s ears.

Frumpkin.

Okay.

“Caleb – hey, it’s just me – let go of the reins, okay? Eodwulf’s going to drive.”

He lets go of the reins.

 _Scheisse_.

He breathes.

Eodwulf takes his place on the bench, reins in one hand, and Caleb shifts himself into the back of the cart, where Astrid is glancing at him worriedly and Luc is playing with some spare buttons and marbles in the corner of the cart, Essek humming some song he doesn’t recognize. Yeza and Nott walk next to the cart, carrying on a soft conversation about alchemy, throwing worried glances his way when they think he isn’t looking.

He leans against the back wall, knees pulled up to his chest and Frumpkin wrapped around his neck, and tries not to flinch when Astrid settles next to him.

She doesn’t say anything.

 _Ja_.

It hasn’t been this bad in a while.

But right now it’s – it’s pretty Not Great.

He traces words in celestial onto his palm, to help focus in to the real world, and not what’s brewing in the back of his mind.

The trees thin out ahead.

The road, as well, is getting wider now, and more cared for – no longer just a tramped down dirt path, actual cobblestones.

Probably getting near a town, then.

That’s good.

He leans a little heavier against the back of the cart, and taps Nott on the shoulder.

“Hey – Caleb – you alright?” She asks, hands nervously fiddling with the crossbow in her lap.

He nods, and points towards where chimney smoke is just starting to become visible over the horizon.

“We are, ah, approaching a town. I think.”

“Oh, okay!” she searches through her bag for a second, and he watches as her face falls.

“A – a fancy town, do you think? We don’t have enough gold for an inn if it is.”

They are moving closer, now, and from what he can see – brick and wood buildings, whitewashed walls, simple structures.

“Not a fancy town, I don’t think.”

He squints for a second, and – there’s an inn, it appears, a few hundred feet away and to the left.

He points it out to Yeza, and a bit later they hitch up the horse and cart to a post outside and head inwards.

The inn is slightly shabby, just a little bit. There’s a few cobwebs lurking in the corners of the ceiling, and the tables and chairs are mismatched and worn. Despite that, it seems, he notes, to be pretty popular, given the fact that it’s only four pm and the tables are already half filled with an assortment of farmers, some mineworkers, and just a scattering of people in general.

They sit down at a table in the corner, the seven of them, and he - he trusts Nott and Yeza to handle getting rooms so he just pillows his head and arms onto the table and tries to ignore the noise. Essek sits close enough against him to touch, and falls asleep within minutes, head resting on his shoulder. Astrid and Eodwulf take position around them, almost like guards, and Astrid starts playing a simple card game with Luc while Eodwulf scans the perimeter of the inn, eyes combing over and over everything and everyone, his hands clenched into tight fists in his lap.

He catches fast snippets on conversation above him – Yeza talking to the innkeeper, Nott handing off some food to Luc, Nott talking about what the weather is like outside because apparently it’s pouring now – he falls asleep for a little bit, himself, and wakes up to Nott’s soft voice talking to Luc and Luc’s softer voice speaking back.

He props his head up on one of his fists.

“Did we get the horse taken care of?” He asks, blinking away the sleep that he had been taking.

Yeza nods, grimly. “Yeah. Money’s going to be rough, though. We have enough for meals tonight and tomorrow, and a room for the night. That’s, uh, that’s it. If we want to have food beyond just foraging and rations we need to get some coin.”

Hm.

“I could.” He stops to swallow down the initial burst of panic that this thought causes. “I could sell some of my compon-“

Nott shakes her head violently. “You don’t need to do that.”

They lapse into silence again. They’d already sold much of the finer clothes they had owned, a month into travel like this, scrounged around for any money they could get to buy food and make sure Luc would never go hungry.

Yeza coughs into his fist. “We could just – stay here, in town, for a bit? Look for work? We should be far enough from the border and from any larger cities that we can lay low.”

“Where is here, exactly?”

“The innkeeper said the town’s called Melegryn, we’re roughly three weeks journey from Port Damali, a day and a half from Gwardan. And the trees were blocking the view, before, but we’re close to the base of the mountains.” Yeza raps his fingers against the table, and sighs.

“I know, I know staying in the same place isn’t the most optimal thing, right now. But we are out of money, and if we want actual food for Luc and a roof over our heads we might need to suck it up and stay put for a while.”

If it was just him and Nott, they could probably rough it out. If it was just him and Astrid and Eodwulf, even, they could probably manage.

But. Luc deserves so much more than that. Essek, he thinks, looking at the thin form of his new friend, couldn’t survive that for much longer than he already had been forced to.

“ _Ja_ , that might be best.” He expects Astrid and Wulf to protest, but it seems they’ve made the same calculations he has, because they simply nod, looking exhausted.

He rests his hand onto his hand, and observes the rest of the tavern. He hadn’t been sleeping long – the light outside tells him its probably around five thirty. The tavern is a little fuller now, with people starting to come in off a days long work and people getting dinner before heading off to work the night. There’s dwarves, here, and elves, more than he’s used to seeing in the Empire, and a bunch look like they’ve just got off a mining job, still wearing heavy duty clothes with traces of dust and dirt on them. Loggers, too, it seems like, or hunters – clad in thick pelts, axes balanced at their side as a party of them has a roaring laugh at some unheard joke, tankards of mead slammed onto the counter and making him flinch.

Everyone looks cheerful, despite the weather outside.

He’s glad to see that the seven of them don’t stand out too much, beyond the fact that they have Luc with them – there’s other halflings and humans here, and a few tieflings and even a handful of goblins in the same group as the dwarves, playing a card game and gambling with small pebbles. Elves, too, and even another drow, part of the same logging group, a thick scarf wrapped around their hair as they laugh uproariously, rolling a pair of dice on one of their hands.

They’ve noticed, as they got away from the empire, that goblins and drow are not as hated here, because Nott hasn’t been getting weird looks and they’ve seen other goblins along the way, all of whom had been a little strange, maybe, but not like the stories that Nott would tell about her time with the clan near Felderwin. Essek, too, hasn’t really stuck out.

Regional differences, he guesses.

He doesn’t really know. The Empire is very – monolithic, in races, and beliefs.

It’s better for Nott, here. She doesn’t have to hide as much.

“We could always go and see if there’s an apothecary in town, see if they need just – assistants, I guess?” Yeza is saying, and he belatedly realizes that he’s missed out on the conversation again.

“M-Maybe? If Caleb could watch Luc –“

Nott’s voice is cut off by the inn keeper who has swept over to their table, long heavy skirt trailing around her boots.

Its embroidered with little frogs near the hems. Strange.

“You folks need anything, now? My name’s Jo.”

Yeza clears his throat, and sits up a little straighter in his chair. “We’ll be taking dinner, if that’s alright.”

She gives him a warm smile, and nods. “Anything else?”

Nott shoots him a quick glance, and after a pause, she speaks up.

“We – we are, um – we’re going to be in town for a while. Do you know of any place that’s – that’s hiring, maybe?”

Jo leans back on her heels and thinks for a second, counting out something on her fingers.

“Huh. Well, mines are probably out of the question for ya’ll, if you’ve got a kid with you – cute kid, by the way - the people who work with the fair folk, too, at least til he’s a little older– and I don’t think there’s anywhere in town that’s hiring. Old Joe’s been looking for some folks to help out with training the militia, but you folks don’t really look like fighting types, if you pardon my mouth.”

If she only knew, he thinks. If only that was true.

She falls silent for a long minute, and he’s just about to ask something else when her face lights up and she snaps her fingers.

“But there’s this family, out on the old Dordain farm, they moved out here a couple of months ago. Might still be looking for farm hands, or at least just people to help out in the shop they’re opening up in Gwardan. If you folks want, I can send them a message, get one of them out here by morning to see if they need any help? They’ve made quite a name for themselves in this sleepy little town of ours, don’t get much new folk round here. They’re real nice, though. I’m sure they’ll be able to hook y’all up with some work, even if it’s just for planting season.”

“That would be – that would be great, thank you.” Yeza tilts his head at Caleb, and he nods in return. Nott nods as well.

Astrid and Eodwulf just stare, distant.

Essek murmurs something in undercommon in his sleep that almost sounds like an agreement.

And Luc – well, he nods, but he just looks confused and a little tired.

It’s adorable.

Jo smiles, again, and then turns and yells out, “Oi! Kreech!”

A dwarf turns away from watching the goblins’ card game, and grumbles over the din of the tavern, “What’d you want, Jo? I’m busy over here, Iriks is gonna win – “

One of the goblins – Iriks, he guesses – drops his cards, and pulls his hands to his face.

“- or not.”

Kreech stands up, and lumbers over to Jo. He’s large, for a dwarf, and is probably a good two heads taller than Nott.

“What’s up?” He asks, reaching a hand up to scratch at his beard, careful not to disturb the wildflowers that appear to have been braided in.

“Can you send a message to the folks at the Dordain farm, tell ‘em I’ve got some people looking for work?”

He raises his eyebrows, but just ends up nodding. “Yeah, sure thing, Jo. You want me to send it to – Clay, or –“

“Clay’ll be fine, I think. Tell him to either come, or send someone I guess, round the morning?”

“Sure thing, doll.” He winks at her, and Jo bursts into laughter.

“Shut it, Kreech.” She swats him with the washcloth attached at her belt.

Kreech chuckles, and writes down a short message on a piece of paper. With a snap, a small burrowing owl appears on his shoulder, and with a careful motion, the paper is placed in the owls claw.

He then proceeds to just lean over and throw the bird out the window.

Well, then.

Caleb tightens his fingers from where he had started to pet Frumpkin in his lap.

“You should be nicer to Bartholomew, Kreech – swear to all the gods, you ain’t never learned how to treat him nice.”

“Can’t believe you named him Bartholomew, I wish I never lost that bet –“

“Your own fault for being so darn awful at scorpion catching, you fool –“

The two walk away bickering, and leave the rest of them staring in confusion.

“ _Okay_ , then.” Nott whispers, and she and Yeza share a confused look.

“We can always say no, _ja_? If this Clay turns out weird.”

“He’ll probably be weird. But we’re probably weirder.” Yeza glances around at them, and shrugs. “If it doesn’t work out, we can leave again. We have no stakes here. But we need to at least try.”

True.

* * *

The room that they have for the night is simple, but it’s clean and dry and there’s a bed big enough for four of them to fit, if they scrunch in. In the end, Yeza and Luc and Nott take the bed, and he and the others make a pile of their bedrolls on the ground at the base of it, using each other as pillows and curling together until sleep eventually takes them. They’re safe enough – he hopes, he thinks, he hopes – in this room, with both the dome and his wire across the door and windows.

He is so scared of staying. Of stopping his running, of stopping the constant terror in his mind that screams at him to escape, of catching up to the lick of fire at his heels.

But he owes it to all of them to try, and least. To keep them all safe, and healthy. To give Luc a better life. Here, in this too-warm room with no real blankets, no real pillows, but with family he would do anything to save – he can have this. He can protect them. Everything will – maybe they won’t be okay, but they’ll be alright.

And he sleeps.

He wakes up, a few hours later – three am, his mind whispers – with a scream half held behind his teeth and a terror that takes a few exhaustingly long moments to fade.

Nott’s eyes blink open, blearily, as he sits up to hunch against the bed frame.

She doesn’t say anything, but she pats his shoulder and curls in closer to him.

It takes another hour, of sitting and rocking and trying not to wake anyone else up before he sleeps.

And then it is morning.

Breakfast, downstairs, is a quiet affair. There’s not a lot of people at the inn, at this hour, and Jo serves them up plates of eggs and potatoes within minutes of their sitting down.

She cocks her head at them. “Kreech got back to me last night, said that Clay’s gonna send over one of his people round nine. Not sure who he’s sending, but, honestly, all his folk look pretty distinctive so you shouldn’t miss em.”

She whirls away to sweep to opposite corner.

“It’s eight thirty, now.” He mumbles, and makes a clock chime under his breath.

“Caleb, do you and Nott want to go make sure that we got everything packed, upstairs? I don’t want to have left anything behind. We can stay down here to meet the person when they get here, and watch Luc –“

Luc high fives his fathers gesturing hand, and then continues to eat his eggs.

“- thank you, Luc. Just in case we need to get out of here in a hurry?” he finishes, and stuffs a bite of potato in his mouth.

“ _Ja_ , Yeza, we can do that.”

He kisses Astrid on the top of her head, absent mindedly, and brushes both Eodwulf’s and Essek’s shoulders with a soft hand.

Nott bobs her head next to him, and scarfs down a few more bites of eggs before leaping off the stool and heading back upstairs. He follows a bit behind, and Yeza flashes him a grateful look as he passes by.

They pack up their bags and he spends a quick second to fold Luc’s blanket and place it back into Yeza’s pack. It doesn’t take long to get everything together, honestly, even taking into account the fact that Nott gave up after five minutes and just started to organize her own bag full of buttons and various shiny bits. This long into traveling, he knows by heart which things go in which pockets, to which person. Not that they really have separate belongings, now adays, but – he remembers, still. He’s good at this.

When they head back down stairs, packs in tow, Yeza’s in the middle of conversation with someone who must have come in while they were upstairs, wearing a pair of muddy boots and overalls –

And a very familiar cloak.

A very familiar haircut.

Nott, at his side, lights up, and races down to the table. He follows, and before he can overthink it, he calls out, “Beauregard?”

Beau turns towards him, and shock overtakes her face.

“Holy shit man, Caleb? Nott –“

“Hi!” Nott calls out, and slides into the stool next to Yeza.

“Hello, Beauregard.”

She stares at the two of them, and then to Yeza, and then to Luc, and the back to the two of them. Takes a long look at Astrid, and Eodwulf, and Essek, and squints, trying to piece it all together.

“Are you guys actually looking for work? Or.”

“ _Nein_ , we are looking for work. We are, ah –“

“We’re super broke.” Nott shrugs, and then leans in closer to Beau.

“Do you live here? Where’s the rest of everybody?” She demands, reaching out to poke a bony finger at Beau’s chest, colliding with a thump against the weight of her thick cloak.

“No, yeah, we’re all here – I mean, Fjord and Yasha are out on a trip to the coast right now to grab some stuff, but everyone else is here and they’ll be back tomorrow – where the fuck-“

Nott covers Luc’s ears and hisses.

“Sorry – where have you guys been? Jester’s been trying to send messages for months, now, we thought you might have – well.”

She kicks at the ground, and scowls.

“We were worried. A lot of sh- stuffs happened since you guys left.”

Caleb frowns, and he subconsciously traces the outline of the amulet under his shirt.

“I apologize, Beauregard, that may have been my fault. And sending can be – precarious, sometimes.”

She sighs, and sits down at the table with them.

“It’s fine, man. Least you guys are okay.” She throws a thumb over to Yeza, and continues, “Who’s this? I mean – you said your name was Yeza?”

Yeza nods, and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

Nott – she’s fiddling with the bandages wrapped around her hands, and she looks nervous.

“He’s um.”

She sighs.

“He’s my husband.”

Beau blinks.

And then blinks again.

“O…kay?”

“We’ve uh – we’ve been married for five years?” Her voice tilts up at the end, and Yeza slowly lowers his head onto the table in exasperation.

“Nott.”

“Yes?” Her eyes refuse to look at Beau’s face.

“Aren’t you like. Nine?”

Nott looks vaguely panicked.

“Sort – sort of?”

Caleb scrubs a hand over his face, and sighs.

“It’s a long story, Beauregard. And maybe not something to be explained – ah, explained here.”

Beau raises an eyebrow, but huffs out a small laugh. “And who are these folks?” She gestures at the rest of his friends, and smirks. “You guys got caught up in the whirlwind that’s Nott and Caleb, huh?”

He winces. “Ah. Beauregard, this is – Essek,” and Essek waves, already looking tired even though he’s just woken up, “And – um.”

He’s blushing. He can tell. “Astrid and – Eodwulf. Whom – whom I told you about. Briefly. But there’s – ah. Past issues that you may be thinking of have been mostly – uh. Mostly resolved.”

Gods, that sounded stupid.

Beauregard slowly looks at Astrid and Wulf in turn, eyes squinting, and apparently she sees something she likes because her shoulders relax, and she stops the glare and sneer that had started to creep onto her face.

“Glad that you two are alright. I’ll want to hear the full story – everything, honestly, what the f…heck happened to you guys – but that can wait till we get you back to the others.”

She taps her staff against the ground – it looks different, he notes, more solid, less like a weapon, and it’s… shorter? Maybe she’s changed fighting styles – and bites her lip.

“About work, though – you don’t need to like. Look for it? Unless you really want to, I don’t know. But we have a house? And honestly like. A lot of money.”

She smiles, a bit.

“Jester and Molly would be glad to see you guys. And, wow, you haven’t even met Caduceus –“

“Caduceus?” He asks, mind pausing on the name.

Beau chuckles. “He’s this giant firbolg dude, we met him up north in this graveyard – really long story, I’ll tell you later – he’s real chill, I’m sure you’ll like him. He’s a little weird, but. No weirder than the rest of us, so maybe not that weird? Or maybe really weird?”

Her face scrunches up in confusion, almost, and –

He missed her. He missed her so much.

“But yeah. Do you want to come to the house? We have room, there’s a second house on property that no one’s using, even. Might take some renovation, or whatever, but it’s livable, and we have a pretty decent set up going here. There’s plants, and flowers, and cows and sh…stuff. It’s nice.”

Nott glances at him, from across the table, and he blinks slowly.

“That sounds good, Beau. That sounds – honestly, that sounds perfect.”

He guesses they really are staying here, then.

At least – at least for now, he tells himself.

(In the back of his mind, he knows that giving up these people again would tear more of him apart than he has left.)


	2. Chapter 2

They leave the inn in sunlight bright enough that he winces, just trying to get the grasp of his surroundings. Behind him, he hears Essek whimper, almost, near-silent in the back of his throat, and his coat is off and flung over his skin in seconds, before he even thinks consciously to do it.

Essek stares at him, with wide eyes, and nods, drawing the coat around himself tightly. There had been few sunny days, ironically enough, on their journey through the coast, and he had spent near all of those days in the back of the cart, in the shade -

He had forgotten, for a moment, that drow are sun-sensitive. That Essek is doubly so.

(The story of the sun-chamber rings in his head, again, and echos with the sound of Essek’s crying when he tried to talk his way through it. He puts the thought aside. Needs to focus, here, step behind Beauregard -)

He steps up beside Beauregard, who’s been leading them around the building to the stables, and tentatively asks, “If I - may, Beau, how far is the farm? Did you walk here, or -”

She laughs, a bit. Months ago, he thinks it would have sounded scornful, but right now it just sounds like a laugh. (He isn’t sure if it’s because she finds the thought funny, or because he’s lost the ability to read her.)

“No, I took a cart out here. Hitched it up to Yarnball. And it’s about - an hour away? Yeah, like an hour. You can walk it, it’s only like four miles, I’m just not the biggest fan of long walks anymore.”

He notices - properly notices, for the first time, because he’s finally paying attention to what she looks like now rather than piecing together parts of her from his memories - that the carved length of wood he had taken for a weapon was, by some probability, not a weapon. Or, well, it could be a weapon - he had no doubt that Beauregard would be more than apt with it - but that wasn’t the purpose. Not the primary purpose, at least. 

Her cane matches stride with her left leg, held in her right hand, and he can tell up-close that the carvings and drawings carefully painted on it were done painstakingly. It’s beautiful, he thinks. Fits Beauregard well.

There are seven dicks that he can count in the first glance at it, and he knows with fondness that Jester painted it.

“You guys have a cart, yeah? I can probably take one or two more people in mine - three, probably, if I take Nott and Yeza - and, uh. I don’t… actually think I asked, huh. What’s the kid’s name?” She angles her cane in the direction of Luc, and Luc waves, an excited grin creeping onto his face.

“I’m Luc! I’m five. Are you a tree-person?” He flits over, before Nott can stop him, and pokes at her cane.

Beauregard squats down, carefully, leaning on the cane, till she’s eye-level with him. “No, I’m not a tree person. But I know some tree people, and maybe one day you’ll meet ‘em, huh?”

Luc stares up at her, eyes wide - he can practically see the sparkle setting in them - and Beauregard laughs, again, and they finally reach the stable building next to the inn. Beauregard pokes her head in, yells something out - in what sounds like Elvish, to his ear, but he didn’t think that she knew Elvish - and someone from within responds in the same tone. A minute of the sound of chains jangling inside later, a young-looking woman comes out, black hair wrapped in a messy braided bun on top of her head, and two large furred ears swiveling towards any sound in the vicinity. 

“Ah, Beau!” She chimes, switching back into common with ease. “Back for Yarnball, I assume? Gave her one of those treats Yenezza’s been working on, she seemed to love it. Come in, come in, I’ll give you some to take back.” She swivels, towards the rest of them, and drops into a short bow. “Hello, Hello! Visitors? Friends of this rascal, here?” She tilts her head, and he notices that along with the ears her eyes are a dark gold, slitted pupils staring at them, smile showing just the barest hint of fangs.

“We are - ah -” he stutters, and he glances at Beauregard, the desperation he’s feeling written right across his face. 

“They’re coming back to the house with me, Uleleigh. Friends of mine, yeah! Haven’t seen them in awhile, might be staying here. Mind telling Lucille that I’ll be over to pick up our usual order tomorrow, instead of today?” She jerks her head, gesturing across the street, and he notices with a start that it is a proper street they’re standing on, cobblestones under his feet. The stables, from what he can tell, seem to be an entrance of sort into town, the Inn directly next to them. Across the street, where Beau gestures, stands a few more buildings, gray smoke billowing out of a shared chimney, and the wind carries with it the scent of smoke and ash and - bread, he thinks longingly. Warm, fresh bread.

A bakery, he supposes. 

… It looks nice.

The street, behind them, curves around another corner - where the rest of the town lies, he assumes - but the road in front of them curves and stretches into the distant forests and mountains lurking on the horizon, disappearing from view amidst scattered fields and houses. Small town, he guesses.

He… still isn’t sure where they are. Or even how far from the Empire they’ve gotten.

For all he knows, he lost track of North weeks ago, and they were traveling in circles until they got here -

His thoughts are interrupted by the rough skin of Astrid’s hand, acid worn and damaged, slipping into his own, and he squeezes tight.

The horses have been brought out while he was busy staring at buildings and making himself miserable, and Eodwulf’s already in the process of hitching Bluebird to the cart, hands busying themselves with fastening the metal buckles. He steps up and helps his - his friend tie the ropes and get the cart ready, and then helps boost Essek and Astrid up into it. Yeza and Luc climb into Beau’s cart with her help, and Nott climbs onto the front seat alongside Beauregard.

He takes the reins, and Eodwulf takes a careful seat next to him.

“Right, you okay to just follow behind? Like I said, it’s about an hour to the farm.” Beau nods to the right, where the road curves into town. “We’re on the other side of the river, though, so just follow me across town and we’ll be on the road in a second.”

With that, she turns back, and then they’re off. He follows a few paces behind her, coaxing Bluebird into a walk, and they make their way past the inn - The Star’s Balance, he reads on the sign - and then around the corner into the town proper.

Well. He says town, but it’s really more of a village. He can count the number of buildings, and they all seem to be clustered around the main plaza, directly next to the river. The Inn is next to one bridge, another a few hundred feet upriver, and they cross with little fanfare, wagon wheels clattering against the stone. On the other side of the river, they pass a few more buildings - some businesses, a few homes, what he thinks is a temple, though to who he can’t tell - until, another minute later, they pass the last building on the edge of town and are back on a road, the cobblestones fading to well-worn dirt ruts as the stone buildings fade to wood, and then to fields, and then to scattered trees as he follows Beauregard down the road.

At first, they pass farms every few minutes, but the further from the village center they get the longer it takes to reach any sign of life. They’re heading southwest, from the village, and eventually, he notices that it’s been almost twenty minutes without seeing any other farms or homes.

The edge of the forest looms large in the distance, scattered brush turning into a dense mass of greenery, but as they edge away from the hill they’re traversing around, the ground around them flattens out, and he sees the farm for the first time.

The first thing he notices, is that there’s a wall around the entire property, a short thing of plaster and stone, that stretches out into the distance in either direction. The road ends here, he notes with some curiosity, and it looks like the wall goes straight up to - and past, he thinks, squinting - the treeline.

The second thing that he notices is Beauregard stopping her cart and getting out entirely before reaching past that wall.

He pulls up to a stop beside her cart, and climbs down as well, taking a few careful steps up to where she’s standing in front of a low iron gate. There’s a mailbox, up here, he notices with some confusion - maybe there is a postal system? Strange, for such a small town - as well as a sign, that has written in what he recognizes as Jester’s careful scripting, “Hi! Please knock on the gate, and someone will come to meet you! Don’t try entering! - The Mighty Nein” alongside a small drawing of a toothy grin.

“Is everything alright, Beauregard?”

Beau hums, and nudges her foot against the gate. “Peachy keen, dude. Just gotta key you into the wards, so give me a sec.” She crouches down, and lays her hand on the stone that’s resting flat under their feet.

… Wards, he thinks, confused. He still can’t see the house, or any sign of life, for that matter. For all intents and purposes, the land inside the walls looks just as unbroken and unlived in as the road they had just finished traversing, only fallowed fields and wildflowers growing rampant.

Beau grunts, near his feet, and he watches as she pokes around beneath the section of stone she’s lifted up now, finally going, “Ah, shit, there it is,” after a long minute of wiggling her arm into the space. She pulls her arm out, fingers locked around a dark blue crystal, tiny intricate runes etched into every facet, and sits up.

“Right, it doesn’t need real names, just whatever you’re going by, so don’t worry about that. It’s Astrid, Eodwulf, Essek, Nott, Luc, and Yeza, yeah? And you, of course.”

He eyes the crystal warily. “How did you - that’s… a grade five warding stone. How did you even get that? How - why do you have that?”

Beau rolls her eyes. “Look, that’s going to take a lot of explaining, and explaining that’s going to be easier when we aren’t standing out here like a bunch of idiots. Did I get the names right?”

He huffs, but nods - and then shakes his head. “Wait, no, Nott - ah. Her name is Veth. She goes by Veth. And - and Nott, too, but - mostly Veth?”

He hates how that sounds like a question, but Beau just nods. “Right, then. Other ones okay?”

He nods, again, weaker this time, and she smiles at him.

“You’ll enjoy this, probably,” she murmurs, and she closes her eyes, rolling her shoulders back and then down as she holds the crystal in her lap. 

Her voice, when she speaks, is layered with some force that is somehow both hers and not hers, and it’s in Celestial, which he finds even more surprising.

“As guardian of this place, and as holder of this crystal, I beseech unto you fair passage, life, protection and entry to those that I bring with me, for them to live amongst me and mine and to become me and mine,” she murmurs, repeating some script. “Caleb Widogast, Astrid, Eodwulf, Essek, Luc, Yeza, Veth - I bring all into my fold, and all to sit at my table. Through this light, let this be made true.”

The crystal flares with light, bright enough that he blinks against it, and when he opens his eyes -

The land beyond the walls is no longer empty, and the walls themselves are no longer simple plastered stone. Rather, the walls are intricately carved arches, sweeping through the land around them and through small fields now made visible, patches of tilled land and a few animals grazing that are all dwarfed by the house he spots, a few hundred feet away.

Well, saying that he spots the house first is a lie, because the first thing he notices is the massive thirty-foot tree growing atop a tower, its roots curling around it until they dig into the ground, burrowing into the tower and the ground, firmly grounding the house to the soil. The tree is covered in lanterns, shining like tiny beacons amid the branches, and a blanket of greenery coats the top of the tower.

The second thing he notices is that this is less of a farmhouse, and more of a manor. Whitewashed walls and a dark-stained timber frame, thick glass windows with bright colored curtains he can see from here decorating the walls. There’s ivy climbing up the sides of it, a trellis covered in vines and a garden, to the right of the main building. But to the left - there is a second, smaller building, looking newer than the first, connected to the main through an extended stone hallway, branching off from the main house in a burst of stone and dark-colored glass.

On second look - Stained glass, he thinks. 

It’s beautiful. It’s expensive.

(How did they afford this? The house alone would be more money than he’s seen in his life, let alone wards of that nature - just what in gods name have they been getting up to since they were gone?)

Beau levers herself up again with her cane and pats dust off her knees, grinning at the house. “Right, we can head in now. I - uh. I had no way to tell the others you were coming, so… be prepared for some very excited teiflings.”

She takes Yarnball’s reins, and walks alongside her, leading her past the gate and into the grounds. He turns around, and finds Astrid, Eodwulf, and Essek all staring at him, all of them having felt the crackle of the wards against their skin as it added them to the registry and who are now staring, dumbfounded, past him and at the house.

“Caleb, what the fuck,” Astrid hisses, wide eyes still locked on the house. “Wh - how -”

He shrugs, and takes the reins of Bluebird. “I have no idea, I - really, I have no idea. They did not have this much money when I left them. Not even an - a hundredth, of what this must have cost. I am… very confused.”

Maybe he’s dreaming? That would make as much sense as anything else has.

Eodwulf whistles. “Well, hey, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

Astrid swats him. “Yes, you do, you idiot, you have to check that it has all its teeth and isn’t going to bite you -”

“Nowhere to go but forward, though, yes?” Essek raps his hand against the side of the cart, and blinks sleepily from under his coat.

Astrid frowns, but nods, and he leads the cart through the gates.

The whisper-soft touch of the wards passing over them is enough to make him shiver, but they let them all through without an issue. It’s reassuring, in a way, to know that they’re so protected here. He’ll ask for specifics, later - whether the wards block all non-registered entry, what the parameters of the illusion were, whether it blocks scrying or teleportation, what it’s powered with - but he leaves those aside, for now, as he follows Beau towards the house. She leads them around to the right side, and to the stables that lay just behind the house. There’s another horse in there, slowly munching on some hay, that doesn’t look up, not even when Beau kicks the door open and unhitches Yarnball, leading her back into her stall and tending to her. He does the same to Bluebird, and Beau nods towards an empty stall, already prepared with fresh hay and feed and water.

They leave the carts there, sheltered under the extended roof of the building, and Beau limps back around front. There are no stairs, to get in - a blessing in disguise, he thinks - so in a matter of seconds they’re arranged in front of the door, purple-painted wood with a molded brass doorknob standing in front of them.

Beau raises a hand, and bangs on the door. What sounds like chimes echo in the wake of the sound, and when there’s no response for the first round of knocking she does it again.

“Who is it,” a voice sings, from behind the door, and he shoves the urge to laugh into the back of his throat.

“Jessie, open up, I’ve got a surprise,” Beau shouts, and the door whips open.

Jester looks almost exactly the same. Hair a little longer, some new scars - one stretches almost horizontal across her neck, and he winces at what that must have been - but she’s grinning, and bouncing in place, an apron over her dress covered in flour. “What is it, Beau, I was in the middle of baking - oh.”

She stares at him, eyes wide, and he waves. “Hallo, Jester.”

Her hand raises to cover her mouth, and then in a flash, she’s in front of him, arms flung around him, and he hugs her back, tucking his head in the middle of her horns.

“Caleb - Caleb,” she cries, and he’s shocked to see tears gathering at the corner of her eyes when she pulls away. “I - we - you didn’t respond to any of my messages, we thought you were dead -”

She steps back, and Nott grins. “Hey, Jester. Long time no see, huh?”

Jester stares, and then picks Nott up in a massive hug, spinning her around. “Nott - it’s so good to see you guys!”

She sets Nott down, carefully, and smiles at the rest of their motley crew. “Who’s all the rest of you, then? You pick up a whole new adventuring party when you left, Caleb? Did you -”, she gasps, frowning exaggeratedly, “- did you replace us?”

Nott rolls her eyes. “Jester, this is - well, this is my husband, Yeza, and my son, Luc.”

Jester stares. Starts to laugh, awkwardly, and then stops, and stares some more.

“You’re married?” She shrieks, and she claps her hands together. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh - it’s so nice to meet you! And you’re so cute, oh my gosh, Luc, right?”

She kneels down and holds out a hand for a high five, which he returns gladly. “Oh man, TJ’s going to be so excited,” she trills, and Beauregard facepalms.

There’s the sound of heels scuffing against tiles, and a low chime as more people from inside the house heads towards the front door. Mollymauk emerges first, and is a sight for sore eyes, horns just as bejeweled as the last time he saw him. No coat, though, he notes, but he likes the skirt he’s wearing. It’s floating around him in the breeze, and makes it so that he almost misses the smaller figure peeking out from behind him.

Almost.

Behind Mollymauk, there’s a small child - human, probably around the same age as Luc - who looks… almost suspiciously like Beauregard.

Oh, he thinks. Oh.

TJ - he assumes at least - pokes his head from behind Mollymauk, and grins at the rest of them. He scampers out front, and stops on the front sill, placing his hands on his hips, mirroring Molly’s pose. “Hi! Welcome to our house! Would you like to come in!” He all but shouts, and Molly drags a slow hand down his face.

Beauregard chuckles, and steps up, ruffling his hair. “Yeah, this is TJ, he’s my little brother. He lives with us now, I’ll - tell you that story later, I guess. Hey, Caduceus -” she shouts into the house, and then heads inside, beckoning them all in as she does so.

As they step inside, a chime rings as each of them go through the door. The house is just as large and fancy-looking as it was on the outside, and they pass through a smaller entryway stuffed with shoes (the sign inside says “Shoes off! This means You!”, and they all follow its direction) and coat, and umbrellas, and then into a main room, hallways and doors branching off to the left and right. There’s a massive fireplace, in here, along the left wall, and rugs carpet every inch of the stone floors. Scattered plush chairs - a whole bin of stuffed and wooden toys, a dragon peeking out of the top of it, a massive block structure built up in the corner - paintings on the walls, drawings up higher that he can tell were made by Jester, and lower ones, too, full of child-sized handprints and drawings of trees and flowers. It’s nice. It’s cozy.

It already feels so much like a home.

“Oh, visitors?”

The man that comes into this main room, wiping his hands on his apron, has to duck to clear the top of the door. Pink hair trails in lazy waves down his back, half of it shaved down, and pink eyes stare out at them curiously. A firbolg, he thinks. He’s never met one, aside from Pumat Sol, all those lifetimes ago in Zadash.

“Yeah, sort of - Caduceus, this is Caleb, and that’s Nott. The ones we told you about? The rest of them are uh - Astrid, Eodwulf, Essek, Yeza, and the little one’s Luc. They - well. Um.”

She sits down, on one of the plush chairs, and rests her cane against a side table. “They’re looking for a place to settle down. And, you know, there’s the side-house - I figured, well. Knew none of you were going to protest.”

Jester jumps in place, clapping her hands again. “You guys are staying? Oh my gosh, yes, this is - oh, TJ will have more people to play with, and you will get to see Yasha, and Fjord, once they get back, and you’ll get to meet my mama, maybe, and see Pumat, oh - and Yussah! And maybe some of Cad’s family will come visit, and - and -” She whistles, sharply, and he flinches as a massive dog appears in the middle of the room with a crack of air. The dog barks, once, and then sits, tilting its head at all of them, before leaning down, front paws flat on the floor as it wags its tail wildly. “- This is Nugget! He’s a sweetheart, I’m sure you’ll love him.”

He can feel Frumpkin’s fur bristling against the back of his neck, and he sends a mental signal to his familiar to calm down.

The dog barks, again, quietly, and then settles down at Beau’s feet. 

Caduceus sticks his hand out, the other leaning gently against the doorframe for guidance, and gives a small bow. “Caduceus Clay. Nice to meet you… I’ve heard a lot about you.” He smiles, in a sloppy kind of way, slow and growing and kind. “Hope you’ll love it here as much as we do.”

Mollymauk crosses the room, from behind them - he’d been the one to close the door - and makes a series of hand gestures that -

He recognizes those, actually. Knows them well enough himself.

“Did you actually bake with that flour, or did you spill it all on your shirt?” Molly signs, and Caduceus laughs, signing back, “There’s plenty enough to go around.”

“Can you translate for me?” Molly makes a sweeping gesture at the rest of the room, and then signs, “It’s so glad to see you all again! Sorry for not talking, has just drop kicked the voice right out of me today.”

Out of all of them, he thinks - well, he knows sign, and Astrid and Eodwulf still know sign, because he went nonverbal gods knows how many times as a child, and Nott knows sign because - well, he didn’t even have to teach her that. Yeza’s mother was deaf, and so he knows sign, and they all use it frequently enough that Luc knows it, too -

It comes as a slight surprise that Essek is the one who breaks the (relative) silence first, before Caduceus starts speaking, stepping (well, floating) a few feet forward, and signing, “You don’t need to translate. It’s nice to meet you.”

Essek’s signs are always stiffer than they should be, like he’s used to signing with sticks taped to his fingers. Undercommon sign is a lot - sharper than Common sign. 

Mollymauk’s eyes widen, and then his hands are in a flurry of motion. “You know sign? Do I - we haven’t met, have we. I’m Mollymauk.” He spells his name out, and grins, a little too wide.

“It’s good to see you again, Mollymauk.” Caleb says, quietly, and he signs alongside his words. He’s not sure - well. He’ll ask what he prefers.

“You can talk aloud, it’s fine,” Molly signs, the grin fading to something a little more real. “You - well, it makes sense that you know sign. Do all your new friends over there know it as well?”

He nods. “Ah - and yes, like Beauregard said, we are - looking to settle down. I suppose, that that - that is the word to use for it, yes. I’m - we’re all tired of running. And Luc deserves more than a life on the road.”

Luc and TJ, in the midst of all this adult-talk and introductions, are already on the floor together, both petting Nugget while TJ chatters wildly about how cool the dog is.

“If you’ll have us,” he finishes, biting his nails into his palm.

Jester’s already nodding, and Beau lays a careful hand on his shoulder. “Of course, Caleb. Of course.”

Caduceus smiles at all of them. “If that’s settled enough, then, I’m going to go back to making lunch… any dietary restrictions?”

He startles, but shakes his head, and he watches Yeza and Nott do the same, Nott speaking up, “Not for Luc, either.”

The firbolg nods, and then looks over at his other friends, still almost-huddling in the doorway. “And you all?”

Astrid - oh, Astrid, he thinks for a moment, knowing that she still won’t touch food she hasn’t prepared or watch prepared herself, that others haven’t eaten first with no ill effect - just shakes her head, but Eodwulf hesitates.

“I am - ah. Allergic to milk. Essek, the same.”

Essek nods, silently, drawing back in on himself.

Caduceus smiles. “I’ll keep that in mind. Lunch’ll be ready in… maybe an hour? Yeah, I’d say an hour.” He wanders off back towards the kitchen, humming a tune that he can’t quite place.

“Right, you guys want to check out the house while Cad makes lunch? The second house… well, it only has three bedrooms - one of them’s bigger, and then like… I don’t know, a normal size one? And the last is a tiny one - we have a guest room open in this one, though, if that -”

He shakes his head with panic creeping towards him at the idea of not sleeping in the same room as Astrid, as Eodwulf - gods, as Essek -

If he could make it so that Essek never had to sleep alone again, he would. He’s already trying to do just that.

“- alright, then, no guest room. We’ll - ah - I’ll let you guys figure it out. Follow me, I guess?” Beau shrugs, and then walks towards the left side of the house, through a short hallway and then through the door at the end of it. They follow, all of them, Jester and Mollymauk herding the kids - and Nugget - along behind them.

The room they enter is a training room, of some kind, the floor padded and soft - there’s what looks like a person-sized sling hanging from one of the rafters, a punching bag in a corner, equipment that he doesn’t recognize strewn across the room. The room beyond that, as Beauregard keeps leading them, is a workshop - there’s a sewing machine in here, windows with patchwork curtains all flung open and flooding the room with natural light, bolts of fabric and yarn and embroidery floss thrown about the room in a haphazard kind of organization. Mollymauk’s coat is in here, hanging over a dress form, a fresh panel of embroidery pieced into the back with colorful pins. On the left wall, there’s a heavy set iron-framed door, that Beau opens with a shove - “Sorry, it just sticks sometimes,” she flings back at them, over her shoulder - and they enter a hallway of stone brick and dazzling colored light.

He had thought right, on the stained glass that he had seen outside, because all of the windows in this hallway are intricate pieces of artwork, scenes depicting nature and dragons and all manner of mystical things. It’s drafty in here, a little chilly, but the effect just makes it seem all the more mystical as the gauzy curtains in front of the windows sway in the breeze.

He watches as Essek flinches, first, at the light, but then relaxes when it doesn’t hurt, enough of the sunlight filtered through the glass to strip it of its power, and he touches one of the curtains idly, colors playing across his face.

They accent his cheekbones and the dark purple smudges under his eyes both, and he takes his hand gently. Squeezes it.

Essek squeezes back, giving him a rare smile.

At the end of the hallway is another thick-set door, and Beau nudges this one open the same way she did the first, stepping in to the other house inside.

The other house is in a similar style to the larger, if built newer and smaller. The walls are whitewashed plaster, with dark timber framing the ceiling and the same dark wood forming a polished hardwood floor, a few simple woven carpets covering patches of it. There’s just one main room, here, it seems - a short hallway off to his right leads to a pantry and a staircase up to a higher level, and the main room contains a massive fireplace, a door to what he presumes is… one of the bedrooms Beau mentioned, maybe? 

Beau makes a grand sweeping gesture, to the whole room, and then wilts. “I… forgot that there wasn’t actually furniture in here. We kind of dragged it all to the main house but didn’t even end up using a lot of it - me and Yasha and Fjord can help move some of that back, tomorrow, probably. But - uh.”

She pulls open the door, and he sees that it is, in fact, a bedroom. “This is the larger bedroom, there’s a bathroom under the stairs that it’s attached to - we actually have full running water here, believe it or not, so there’s a sink and shower and everything. Plus, we have a bath in the main house.”

She leaves the door open, and points towards the door that leads outside. “This side of the house is closest to the river, but honestly not that close, it’s like… a ten-minute walk? Still inside the walls, though. Good for fishing. You have your own fireplace in here, obviously, and then there’s a sink and ice-box and stove over there…”

She leads them to the stairs, and gestures at the door beside it. “That’s the pantry, and then upstairs is the second bedroom, the tiny bedroom, and another bathroom. I don’t think we put in the same enchantment on these stairs that we did in the main house? Hold on a second.”

She hums, and taps her hand against the banister at the base of the stairs, waiting for something to happen.

(Nothing happens. He’s not even sure what enchantment she’s talking about.)

“Yeah, guess that’s a no, on that. I’ll talk to Caduceus about getting Yussah back over to enchant this one, too. Nott, Yeza - I’m guessing you guys will take upstairs? I don’t know if you’ll want Luc in his own room, yet, but the options there.”

“Thank you, Beau - We’ll just… drop our stuff off, in there? Are there - beds, furniture, up there?” Nott eyes the stairs with a hungry kind of look.

It’s been… a long time since she and her husband had any alone time. Any time together at all, really, without all the rest of them also being there.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s all clean and everything, we go through and dust every weekend. There’s - uh.” Beau looks embarrassed, for a quick second. “Fjord and Caduceus made a chore chart.”

He snorts, unable to stop it, and she whips around. “Don’t - make fun of it, it’s - it works well.”

He raises his hands, acquiescing. “Sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.”

“Hmpf.”

Nott and Yeza and Luc all climb upstairs, and he hears Nott shout down, “Beau, this is great! Thank you!” right before there’s the loud thunk of their packs hitting the ground.

Beau rolls her eyes fondly, and then walks back around to the ground floor bedroom, shoving the door back open from where it had started to drift closed. “Right, this is the one you’ll be sharing? No judgment, I get it. I still share with Jester.”

The bedroom is large, almost the same size as the main room. One corner has another fireplace - on the back of the one in the main room, he realizes, so it shares the same chimney - and the other a bed, a massive thing that he thinks - no, he knows, from weeks of lived experience, will actually fit all of them, with room to spare, even. There’s soft white curtains on the windows, looking out into the forest and wildflowers growing wildly around them. What look like soft linen sheets on the bed.

It’s… nicer than any inn room he’s seen in the past six years. Than any room he’s stayed since his academy days, probably.

Beau sees the look on his face, and she rests her hand on his shoulder, squeezing once before releasing.

She’s a lot… touchier, than she was before.

He… likes it?

He likes it.

“I’ll let you guys settle in, send Jester to come yell over when lunch is ready.”

She grins, at the four of them. “Welcome to the Mighty Nein, again, I guess.”

He sits on the edge of the bed once Beau leaves, closing the door behind her. 

It’s such a nice room.

Such a nice house. Safe, even.

Maybe safer than anywhere he’s ever been.

He feels Eodwulf place a hand on his back, and Astrid sits down next to him, lacing fingers through the ever-growing length of his hair. Essek sits, right there on the ground, in front of him, his head at knee height.

Hesitantly, he leans his head against his knees, and he closes his eyes, sighing deeply. Some of the stress lines writing themselves into his dark skin even out.

Reaches a hand down, and pets through Essek’s hair, carding out a few stray knots. He’s rewarded with the feeling of Essek leaning even further into him, a low rumble in his throat that almost sounds like a purr.

Closes his own eyes, after a minute.

Feels the soft press of lips to his forehead, from both sides.

This -

They can make this work.

This might work. Might be better than he’s ever hoped for.

And he is. Hoping for it.

He has hope.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... yes, i invented a town, and made a fully realized map with a list of all the people who live there, what all the buildings are, and what the social structures and infrastructure are like, don't at me,
> 
> and yes i also. have a full map of the house. it's a combination of the xhorhouse - the older manor side - layout, and then a smaller cottage type building connected by that hallway. this au is giving me something to do in this time of stress and by gods am i Doing it. hope you're all staying safe and sane, out there. leave a comment! comments make me so happy.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mild tw for a panic attack and dissociation in the middle of this chapter, mainly concerning canon details of caleb's backstory

They settle into the house like a foundation settling into its footing, with some creaking and groaning but settling, in the end. Lunch is delicious, if simple - he thinks, wryly, that they weren’t necessarily planning on seven extra people for feeding - oh, gods, do they even have money to keep them all fed, now, they’re - they’re bothering them, they’re harming them by being here -

Astrid taps his fingers, and he stops scratching his arms, leaning back into her. They’re on the couch in the main room, now, gathered around a cackling Beauregard and Jester as they recount some tale of vandalism, from months ago - something concerning the Platinum Dragon temple in Zadash, a statue, and a very large mustache. He’s lost most of the details, but the companionship is nice.

They clearly have enough money, he reminds himself. They have enough wards on this place to rival the Assembly.

He still needs to ask for the specifics of that, but he can let that wait a day. Wait till Fjord and Yasha arrive, tomorrow.

He wonders how they’ve changed, in the months that he’s been away.

It’s strange, in a way. He hadn’t known the Nein for that long. (Thirty-six days, his mind murmurs, and he blinks, a bit. Was time really that short?)

Huh. He guesses it was that short.

Strange, then, that these people already feel so much like a part of him that he had been missing, but he guesses fate is like that, sometimes. If this is fate.

He’s not sure whether he believes in fate, or not, but if he did - this is kind of it.

“-leb, you in there?”

He blinks, focusing back in on the conversations around then, and Beau is knocking her hand against the arm of the couch, smiling slightly. “We’re debating whether we should have - what was it, Caduceus, rice or soup? Rice dish or soup dish, for dinner.”

He tilts his head, thinking - he’s had rice before, but rarely - but soup… warm, comforting, a bowl wrapped in cold hands…

“Soup,” he votes, and Beau’s fist pumps into the air.

“Soup wins! Thanks, Caleb, you can go back to napping or whatever.”

He huffs. “I wasn’t napping, I was just… thinking.”

Beau rolls her eyes, and bites back, “Wow, really? Impressive.”

The unfiltered sarcasm startles a laugh out of him, and he feels Astrid giggle silently against his side. Essek, nestled into his other side, makes another cross between a sigh and a snort in his sleep, and he _is_ napping, unsurprisingly. They really need to figure out a way to see if they can get his medicine - oh. Maybe he can ask Beauregard? Maybe - well.

No time like the present, he thinks uncomfortably.

“Ah - Beau, if you wouldn’t mind. Would you tell us more about the town, and where we are? We got a little… lost, on our way out here.”

Jester interrupts him, both of her hands now taken up by Luc and TJ’s smaller ones. “Nott, can I take Luc and show him the chickens? Please,” she sings, drawing out the please, and Luc and TJ echo her.

Nott laughs, from where she’s splayed next to Yeza, the two of them sharing the same armchair. “If you want, Jessie.”

Jester beams at the nickname, and then faux-marches out through the front entryway, the kids following her excitedly.

Beau smiles at her as she leaves, and then sprawls out even more against the couch she’s sitting on, feet coming up and tucking themselves under Mollymauk’s legs, at the other end of the couch. “So, the town that I saw you guys in was Melegryn - pretty small town, couple hundred people live around it. Less actually in town, obviously, there’s a lot of farms up and down the river. We’re… you know, it’s weird to say that we’re in the north of the Coast, but I guess that’s where we are? I think like… horizontal, wise, we’re at the same general area as Felderwin, if you know where that is in the Empire. A little further north, even. What else, what else… we’re like… two weeks from Port Damali? Can be longer, depending on the weather and whether the tide’s on a high streak in the Siltbasin Pass. Day and a half from Gwardan - have you heard of Gwardan?”

He shakes his head no, and feels Astrid and Eodwulf do the same.

(Essek, in his sleep, doesn’t move.)

“So, Gwardan’s fucking - it’s cool as shit, I’m sure you’ll love it. It’s an elven city, mostly - lot of dwarves, too? They do a lot of metalworking, do a lot of really cool and exclusive stuff. There’s magic colleges up there, couple of different schools - huge temples to the Allhammer, the Archeart, and the Wildmother, smaller ones to the other prime gods sprinkled throughout the city. Uh - we head into the city… maybe once a week, usually? We’re actually - well, you’ll get a kick out of this.”

She sits up straight, and brushes her hair out of her eyes. “So - you remember Pumat, right? Dude who owned the Invulnerable… Stranger, something like that. Well, we actually bumped into him shortly after we,” she makes air quotes, “’retired’, and he was making plans to set up a shop outside of the Empire - this was before the peace was declared, a few weeks back, and tensions for non-typical races were getting bad enough to rattle him. Anyways, dude fucking _loves_ Caduceus, they’re all buddy-buddy now, so that kind of influenced his decision of where he’s setting up shop - so. Yeah. He’s making a new shop in Gwardan, and obviously he no longer has to like, flee the Empire, but he still wants to…” She screws her face up, and speaks the next few words with an imitation of the firbolg’s accent. “… Expand his horizons, meet new people, come and see you folks, yada yada. But, yeah, he’s setting up shop in Gwardan and we’re going to be helping him out, some, take up a couple shifts in the shop during the week, help stock and stuff. He’s leaving two of his doubles back in Zadash to manage the original shop, so he needed some help. And, well, he does a lot for us, now a days. Least we could do.”

She eyes Essek, and then - hesitates. Tilts her head.

Quietly, she asks, “Not to be rude, but I mean - I am rude, so, whatever. Are elves supposed to sleep? He’s an elf, right?”

He feels Eodwulf shift, near him, and he reaches around Astrid to pat at his shoulder.

“Not… usually. And Essek is a drow, so an elf, yes. He’s -”

Essek had told him the actual word of his condition, but it had been over a month ago at this point, in the middle of the first week of frantic running out of the Empire towards the coast. He -

He never used to forget things, but stress makes the memories slippy.

“He’s had… a rough go of it. But the sleeping thing is something he’s had for a while. On that note, ah -”

Glances at Nott and Yeza (who don’t have the tools knowledge, or materials to recreate Essek’s medicine. They had tried, and only gotten a full day of Essek staring at shadows and flinching at touch), and then back at Beauregard. “Is there an apothecary in town?”

Beau’s eyes flick towards Essek, and then back at him, something knowing in her eyes. “There is - Yenezza owns it. We actually get most of our own stuff from him, he really knows what he’s doing. Salve for my leg, Cad’s joint stuff, some other assortment of things. Is whatever you need urgent? Me or Fjord can go into town tomorrow, ask him if he’s got anything you guys need in stock?”

He pauses, and feels Astrid’s cool hand tap against his wrist. No, not urgent, but - it would be better, for Essek, if they could find that for him again. But he should - he should really ask him, first.

“Not… super urgent. But thank you, Beauregard.”

She grins and throws a hand out, almost side swiping Mollymauk in the face, who dodges with an ease born of months of having to do the same exact thing. “No problem, dude.”

“And, speaking of health stuff - if you guys are like… I want to sort of, go over what’s been happening on both of our ends, if that’s okay with you guys, tomorrow once Fjord and Yasha gets home, but if you have injuries that you need looked at, or anything, Jessie and Cad are both decent healers.”

She glances out towards the front door, and then the window, where they can now all see Jester and Luc and TJ sprinting in circles around the moss and grass covered yard, a few chickens scattering amongst them. “Maybe… ask Caduceus before Jester, he’s generally better at healing.”

None of them are - actively injured, he thinks. He… has his own troubles, joints that are too stiff in the morning and that ache in the evenings, cold weather, in rain - in sunlight, too, even when by all natural means he should be warmed to the bone. Astrid’s hands tremble and shake and freeze with more pain than he can smooth out with his hands alone. Migraines take both her and Essek down regularly. Eodwulf spends wet days hacking like his lungs are flooded with water. Essek floats, because his legs hurt too much for him to touch the ground for hours on end.

They are not well, but not actively injured. He thinks most of them are beyond healing, at this point. Scars and lingering effects are not so easily fixable.

(But maybe - maybe, some small part of him whispers, the part that is uncurling like a sprout placed in the sun in the back of his mind - maybe, they can be better. Maybe, they deserve help.)

(The thought hurts, but he doesn’t let it die. Just - he can’t deal with that right now. It can grow another day.)

“A-again, nothing urgent, Beauregard. But… I will… let you know?” His voice tilts up on the end, and he wishes he could have made that sounds less like a question.

Silently, Astrid tucks her head against his shoulder, and he leans more against her.

“’Course, Caleb. Of course.”

Beau stands, stretching, and holds out a hand to Mollymauk. “Let’s go check on Caduceus, yeah?”

Molly stands as well, eyes flickering between them and Beau, and he nods, brushing lint off his skirt.

Silently, the two leave towards the kitchen, and he curls in on himself against the couch, putting his full weight into Astrid.

Eodwulf’s arm comes around both of them, over the back of the couch, and he lets himself sigh.

Then - whisper quiet, in Zemnian - “Was that - That was okay, what I said, _ja_? I didn’t - I don’t want to share too much, just yet, I was simply curious - I -”

He curls in on himself further, and Astrid starts combing thin fingers through his hair, shushing him gently. “You did good, Caleb, that was good. You’re okay. Do you - I or Wulf can talk, if you need to stop. You don’t have to be the voice of us.”

He shakes his head, and then stills, sighing again. “I - I do, though,” he all but hisses into her shoulder. “I do, I know these people, I wouldn’t- wouldn’t ask you to have to talk for us, I know them and I - I trust them, I think, but I don’t want you to have to force yourself -”

“We aren’t forcing, Caleb. If anything, it’s you that’s forcing yourself to try and talk to them, to talk so much. It’s okay to have trouble with this, it’s - it’s been a lot. For all of us. And for you, it’s been a lot. It’s okay. You trust them, so we - I can trust them, and talk to them. It’s okay.”

Astrid kisses the top of his head, and he feels himself flush red, ears growing hot.

It’s then that Essek wakes up, first stirring with a soft murmur of unintelligible noise and then stretching. He winces as he hears the man’s joints crack, but it doesn’t seem to bother him.

Essek reaches up and rubs at his eyes, and presses himself blearily against Caleb, silent and staring out at the room for a long moment.

He hears his breath pick up, faster, eyes starting to dart around, and he presses his hand solid against Essek’s shoulder. Hums, gently, knowing that the vibrations will be more soothing than his voice would be.

Essek blinks, and then relaxes more, blinking heavily. He sits up.

“Time’sit,” he slurs, and shakes his head wildly, his hair getting even messier.

“Sorry, what time is it?” He says, again, clearer this time, and Caleb releases his grip on his shoulder.

“Around five, I believe,” he says gently. “About two hours since you were last up.”

Essek’s face scrunches up, and he sighs. “Damn it. Did - did I miss dinner?”

“No, no, I would have woken you. We’re still an hour out, probably.”

He glances towards the kitchen, and then switches into Sylvan, syllables soft and familiar on his tongue. “Beau offered to take us into town tomorrow to see the apothecary there. Do you - would you like that? Need that?”

Essek’s hands clench into fists in his lap, and he stares off into the middle distance for a moment. “I don’t… need it, per se. I guess - can we even pay for it? I thought we were out of money?”

He bits his lip, and considers. He does have things he can sell, if there’s anyone trying to buy components in town - he can give up his smaller diamond, he rarely uses that spell, and if he can get - the original price was -

Astrid’s hand falls on his shoulder, and he startles out of his thoughts. “Stop making that face, you’re not selling components. We can figure something out, Essek. See if these folks would let us do some work or something, in exchange.”

She glances around the room, at the thick-woven rugs, the high white-washed ceilings, the faint ozone hum of an arcane light dangling from a chain.

“They can probably afford it,” she whispers, wryly, and he suppresses a wince.

It’s strange, to consider what circumstances might have brought the Nein to this amount of - safety, wealth, connections - while he and Nott were gone. Stranger still, he thinks, the faint taste of panic on the back of his tongue, that Beau was so happy to welcome them in, to a place where her younger brother lived, where Jester lived, where they have built a home.

He’s been running for so long that the idea of stopping is still terrifying. Ikithon is dead, but other scourgers - other members of the Assembly - they remain, and could be looking for him -

He bites his nails into his palms as his mind trips along that path. If he is still being looked for - still being hunted, shivering prey pursued by that relentless hunt, the hunt that has him drawing silver wire across every doorway he stops in to rest, the hunt that has torn into him and eaten most of what had been left.

His breathing picks up.

Him being here is a risk, a danger, something that he should - he can’t be here, can’t be, should have left months ago, should have given Eodwulf and Astrid and Essek what little he had and gone into the hunt that pursued him, he is danger, only danger, what if him being here is just as much a poison as a flame is a warning, as a flame is, crackling up the sides of the walls, streaming in thick tendrils across wood and crackling in the wake of it.

He is nothing more than ash, at the end of the day. Something already burned and scorched by fire, his own fire, something that sinks into lungs and kills, something that coats everything around him in the stink of his own filth. Nothing more than black soot, clogging lungs, minds, flames licking and burning safety away.

It was cold, the day his parents died. Colder than it should have been. The wind had been howling.

The flames had started so small, he remembers. A single bolt that lit the hay-cart alight. The wind pushed the flames higher. Pushed them to the door.

It had taken only a minute for his parents to start screaming.

Less than that for him to start screaming as well.

Fire, orange, and red and blue and black ash in his throat, on his skin, his hands, burning embers because he is the one burning, the kindling that follows and sets everything he loves alight,

The flame, the fire, the flame, the fire - the -

The embers - the -

Hands on his face. Calloused, scarred -

Eodwulf? He - he isn’t - he was there, but he wasn’t, but he was -

“Caleb, _liebling_ , you’re having another attack. Breathe. In and out, you can do it.”

He’s - rocking, he realizes, in steady motions against the couch, his hands flapping jerkily, held in close to his chest. A heavy whine, almost silent, streaming from his throat.

Hands in his hair. The back of his neck. Softer. E-

Too soft to be Eodwulf. (He’s touching his face.)

Not scarred enough or small enough to be Astrid -

He flinches, and the hand stays there, steady pressure at the base of his skull.

Humming, to his side. Familiar and unfamiliar, all at once.

Oh. Essek. Essek’s hands, Essek’s voice.

Loud voices in the other room. Nott’s voice, screeching higher above the rest. Some story about a festival day in Felderwin. She’s distracting them, he thinks distantly.

Making sure they don’t see him like this without him letting them in. Nice of her.

He doesn’t deserve -

No, no, not - not that thought. That way lies brambles.

He hunches over, trying to regulate his breathing, and chokes on the inhale as the phantom taste of smoke still coats his mouth.

“Caleb, we’re going to go back to the bedroom. Okay? Stand up, _liebling_.”

He nods, and stands, grateful for the direction, and almost topples over from the force of the sob that rips through him, numb starting to fade into pain, sharp and prickling around his mind.

He’s going to cry, he thinks. He might already be crying.

Both of his hands are taken up by larger ones, and Essek’s hand stays solid and steady on the back of his neck as he trips along, being led by his friends away from the living room.

The hallway is filled with colored light, and he traces the shapes it makes against the stone flooring as they walk, four people in one huddled mass, through the corridor, their steps echoing along with his too-fast breaths in the silence.

Three pairs of steps, he thinks, counting out in his mind. One person floating. Six feet, eight hands. His own hands, held in others. Hand on the back of his neck. Three pairs of steps, one person floating, six feet, eight hands.

He counts, and he breathes, slowing down in increments until he’s almost back to normal patterns. Sits down on the bed when Astrid and Wulf lead him to it. Let them sit down next to him, lets Essek sit behind him, guarding his back.

Breathes, in and out, when his thoughts pick up again and he starts to hyperventilate, Eodwulf starting to count out breaths for him in a steady voice. In, and out.

In, and out. He’s crying, really crying this time, tears streaming in a heavy torrent down his cheeks, but his hands are held, and there’s a hand on the back of his neck. In, and out.

Takes a deep breath, and then a deeper one. Exhales, counting the beats, and takes another deep breath.

He’s not there. He’s safe. He’s safe, and Astrid is safe, and Eodwulf is safe, and Essek is safe. Nott and Yeza are safe. Luc is safe.

Beau is safe, Jester is safe, Molly is safe, Fjord and Yasha are safe. They’re all safe. They’re all okay.

In, and out.

He blinks, minutes later, and realizes that he’s lying down, almost, his back pillowed against Eodwulf’s chest as they sit against the headboard of the bed. Astrid’s in the bathroom - she’s humming the same song she always sings when she washes her hands - and Essek’s perched on the solitary chair in the room, feet crossed and hovering a solid four inches off the top of it, peering out the window. He brushes the curtains with a half-curled hand, and then turns to Wulf, head cocking.

“There’s bees, outside,” he says, reaching up to rub at his eyes. “Big ones. Is that - normal?”

Wulf chuckles, and he can feel the vibrations all the way through his own chest. “Extremely. Are there not bees in Rosohna?”

“Hard to have bees when there isn’t sun for plants to grow,” he remarks, staring out the window again. “There were some trees, but not many. Mostly ones enchanted to grow in darkness.”

He brushes his hand against the curtain again. “It’s bright out. But it’s… nice.” Blinks, a little owlishly, and then turns back, noticing that Caleb’s coherent now.

“Oh, you back with us?” He comes down off the chair and glides til he’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, then dropping the spell, relaxing into the soft mattress. “It’s only been a bit. Astrid’s just taking the first turn to freshen up for dinner.”

He nods, and pats Eodwulf’s hands lightly so he releases him, moving so that he’s not held against his chest but rather leaning next to him, feet stretching off the bed. They took his shoes off, at some point, he thinks with no small amount of hilarity. That, or he took them off before getting on the bed and didn’t realize it. Either option is likely.

“Thank you, Essek. Wulf.”

Wulf ruffles his hair, and he ducks away. “Don’t - if you messed up the braids, I’m making you re-do them,” he warns, and Eodwulf laughs again, grinning wildly.

“Hang on, hang on,” he mutters, and he sticks his hands on his hair again, this time patting and tucking in where he’d disturbed the braids. “There. Better?”

He runs a hand over them himself, checking, and smirks. He can - push this, he knows he can -

All panic from earlier trickling to ghostly dust in the back of his mind, he smiles. “Hm… I think they’re still a little messed up, maybe check them more?”

Eodwulf quirks an eyebrow, but acquiesces, and while he’s distracted -

Caleb grabs his shoulder and turns them face to face, dropping a fast peck on the lips before darting back. Eodwulf blinks, his other hand touching his lips lightly, and Essek cackles in the background.

“Is this what I miss when I take a minute to wash my hands? My boys kissing?” Astrid taps her foot impatiently, in the doorway leading to the bathroom, and then comes to the bed, dropping a kiss on Essek’s head. “You should all freshen up; dinner will be soon.”

Essek trades places with her, hand skimming the wall as he steps into the bathroom, and he hears the water start to run a moment later.

Astrid sighs, long and drawn out, and splays herself against the bed.

She washed her face, he notes. Brushed her hair.

She looks nice.

“You look nice,” he says, before he can talk himself out of it, and she shoots him a soft smile.

“Thank you, Caleb. It’s nice to get road dust off and be properly clean for once. And honestly - there’s a full shower in there. I haven’t seen one like that since Rexxentrum. I can’t _wait_ to test it out.”

She wiggles her eyebrows at him, and he laughs, real enough to surprise himself. “I’m sure, I’m sure. But really, you look nice.”

She stares around the room, at the clean white walls and ceiling crossed with dark lengths of timber, and makes a face. “It’s so empty in here. If we’re staying, really staying, we should - we should paint. Like how we did in the -”

She stops, face darkening, but shrugs it off. “Anyways. We should paint.”

He nods, ignoring how she stopped herself before mentioning that tower, outside the asylum, that tower that Ikithon had kept and _tortured_ them in -

Time for that later, he reminds himself. One panic attack is enough for him, thank you very much.

“Your friends seem nice,” Eodwulf starts, bumping into him as he climbs off the bed and starts to re-braid his own hair. It’s long enough to be just past his chin, now. Braided up, there’s barely enough to tie in a tail, but he does so regardless. His ears flick, once, and then settle. “Very - ah. Energetic.”

He scoffs, and flicks Astrid in the forehead gently, cracking another smile as she mock-scowls at him. “They have their own unique brand of chaos, yes. It is… good to see them again.”

“You sure you’re okay with staying here?” Eodwulf asks, voice made gentle.

He shrugs, and then stops himself, biting his lip.

“I’m not sure I’m ever sure of anything. But - they’re good people. I don’t think they’d want to hurt us, and this place - it’s safe. We can be safe, here.”

He glances around the room, listens to the still-running water in the bathroom, the soft calls of birds outside, the distant noise of laughter as Jester continues to run around outside with the children.

“Build a life, maybe.”

Astrid smiles at him. “You’ve turned into such a sap,” she complains, but fondly, and she sits up, scooting up and leaning against his shoulder.

He smiles, and ducks his head against her neck.

“Well,” he whispers, into her skin. “Maybe I have.”

Dinner is better than lunch was, and that’s saying a lot. The soup is fragrant with spices he faintly remembers from the coast portion of the student feasts, his first year at the academy, and it’s crammed full of vegetables and roots, cut into small enough pieces for even Luc and TJ to manage with ease. Astrid doesn’t eat til he and Eodwulf are a quarter of the way through their bowls, but when she finally manages to overcome the screaming of her own mind and take a cautious sip, her eyes widen, and she dives into her bowl with the most gusto at the table.

He sets his own bowl down, when he’s finished, and tunes back into the conversation around him - Caduceus telling TJ something about insects, Nott and Yeza reminding Luc to mind his manners, Beau and Jester are discussing… who’s picking up Fjord and Yasha?

He’s… really not sure what that means, and when the mention of a circle catches his ear, he’s _really_ not sure what that means.

“Ah - can I ask, are Fjord and Yasha not already on their way here?” He had assumed they had been traveling up from the coast, landed two weeks ago and made their way slowly back to the farm, but -

“Oh - no, silly! They just docked in Nicodranas tonight, I got a message from Yussah earlier. They’re staying at my Mama’s place tonight and coming in tomorrow morning.” Jester smiles at him, bright, and his confusion grows.

“But… Nicodranas is weeks travel away,” he says, slowly, and Jester rolls her eyes.

“By foot, yeah,” she drawls out, and points towards the ceiling, to some room upstairs. “Not by magic! Yussah’ll just slingshot them back over, real fast, and they’ll be home nice and safe!”

He glances towards the ceiling, and then back at Jester, and then at the ceiling again.

“You have a teleportation circle,” he guesses, voice faint, and Jester nods fervently.

“Yep! Came with the house, some old mage dude used to live out here - ‘s why we got the place, because Yussah knew him before he decided to move to Marquet and so he gave us the house! Don’t worry, we changed the codes and wards and everything.”

He gently rests his head in his hands on the table, and closes his eyes tight.

Sure. Of course, they have a teleportation circle. Why wouldn’t they. The house is already stuffed to the gills with abjuration magic, what’s one more?

Over his head, he hears Eodwulf inhale, slightly, in surprise, and lean forward. “Sorry - did you say Yussah? Like Yussah Errenis?”

He lifts his head back up, slightly, and catches the glimpse of Wulf’s hand start to almost vibrate under the table before he sits on his hands.

“Like - the master of the Open Quay? That Yussah Errenis?”

“Yeah, you know him?” Beau eyes him warily, and spoons herself another serving of soup.

“K-Know, know him, he’s - he’s one of the most published conjuration theorists of all _time_ ,” Wulf starts, knee bumping into the table. “He’s published nearly all of the textbooks on the interactions between planar and conjuration theory - he _wrote_ the book on how demiplanes interact with the material plane on a conjuration level, and how you have to account for the dimensional shifts when using conjuration spells in a planar-adjacent or created space -”

Astrid coughs out the word, “Nerd,” under her breath, and he rolls his own eyes. They’re all nerds, by that definition.

It is, however, extremely cute to see Eodwulf so excited.

“We saved his ass a couple months ago, so he like… weirdly, it’s like he adopted us as like… he’s kind of our patron? He helps us out with shi- stuff, now. At first, he said it was because he was fulfilling a debt, since we saved his life and all, but honestly, I think that he just has a soft spot for adventurers. That’s what Allura said, at least, and she’s known him a lot longer.”

It’s Astrid who stares, now, at Beauregard. “Sorry, did you say Allura? You -”

She swallows.

“Allura Vysoren?” She squeaks, a high blush rising to her cheeks, and he feels himself start to smile as her hands flutter in the air around her, narrowly avoiding hitting Essek in the face. “The - maker on the Arcana Pansophical? Abjuration specialist? The person who created mass-enchantment techniques for the creation of bags of holding? _That_ Allura?”

Beau blinks. “I mean… yeah. Wow, you guys really know a lot of people, huh.”

Astrid screams, in her throat, and sinks down in her chair.

“Who’s the nerd now, _Sassa_ ,” Wulf gloats, and she smacks him on the arm.

“Cool, cool, that’s cool - you guys just - just happen to know two of the most revered specialists in the arcane world, that’s super cool, just - wow,” Astrid mutters, planting her elbows on the table and her face in her hands, talking directly into the wood. “That’s - wow, what an auspicious chain of events. Can you - do they _come_ here? Do they just pop over for tea, and be like ‘Oh hey, it’s me, world-renowned Arcanist Allura Vysoren, I love what you’ve done with the place’,”

“I mean,” Jester sings, her tail swaying behind her, “She’s never come over for _tea_ , but they both come over for dinner maybe… once every other week? They were here a few days ago!”

“Right,” Astrid says, two high spots of red still present on her cheeks.

“Okay,” Eodwulf echoes, just as shaken.

He exchanges a glance at Essek, and almost breaks down in peals of hysterical laughter then and there at the dinner table, as the both stare at each other with the same mutual mix of fond annoyance.

They’re a motley lot, the four of them, he thinks. An even stranger one, when added to the rest of the people stuffed around this table.

They match, though. They match.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> still trucking along with this! if anyone... is interested in seeing the geographical location of melegryn on an actual map, or wants a map of the town, or a floorplan of the house... I've gone a little bananas and have all of those things on hand, and a working mockup of the house and town in minecraft, because I'm obsessed.


	4. Chapter 4

He wakes up crying four times that night. The first time is the easiest, the nightmare already a distant memory in his mind by the time his eyes open, but the others are worse, the fourth worse enough to wake up everyone else in the bed, as well. He reassures them he’s fine - this has happened before, he knows how to fix this - and they blink at him blearily in the darkness of the bedroom before closing their eyes, only Astrid’s staying open to follow him as he steps carefully out of the room.

He’s not the only one having nightmares tonight. Nott’s already out there, sitting in a lump of blankets next to the fire, and he sits down next to her gingerly. She’d noticed him since the instant he opened his door, her ears twitching towards the noise, but she hadn’t moved.

She moves, now, and he opens his arms as she climbs into them, hugging her close to his chest. For a long stretch of silence, they stay quiet, breathing in each other, waiting for the world to resolve itself into softer angles.

“You all right, _Spatz_?”

She grumbles under his chin. “Should be asking you that, Lebby.”

“You know that nickname isn’t going to stick.”

“Won’t stop me from trying.”

She taps her claws against his leg, and he curls his legs in to support her more, a familiar dance. “It’s nice, here,” she whispers. “Too nice. I’m - Luc’s so _happy._ It’s so perfect. _”_

Her eyes reflect the red of the fire. “What if it doesn’t last?”

He hums, and stays silent for a long moment. Tangles his fingers in the length of her hair. She needs a trim, soon.

“I think it might,” he murmurs into her hair. “I hope it will. I think… that at this point, we need to stop waiting for a moment that might never come, and focus on living in this moment, as hard as that is.”

The fire crackles, and they both flinch.

“I hope you’re right, Caleb,” she whispers.

“I hope I am, too.”

He can see the window looking into the front gardens from the corner of his eye, the curtains open. Above them, above the house and the fields and the trees, the night sky is awash with thousands of stars.

Eventually, she yawns, and pulls away, patting a gentle hand on his forearm.

“I’m going to go back to bed, I think,” she mutters, and looks up into his eyes. “You alright to go back to sleep?”

He’s already lost the memory of the nightmare, the screams deafened in his mind, and he nods.

She gives him a small smile, a final squeeze, and heads back upstairs.

He stays by the fire, alone, for a few more minutes. Stares, at the flames, licking the bricks. Listens to the soft birdcalls starting up in the cold morning air.

Climbs back into bed, and falls asleep in minutes.

Fjord and Yasha arrive midway through the morning, an occasion marked by loud chimes as the wards ping the teleportation circle being used. Jester jumps towards the stairs so fast that she almost slams her head against the door before remembering to open it, and a loud cacophony fills the space as they all end up in a waiting cluster around the spiral stairs upstairs. He stays on the couch in the living room, along with the rest of the group that he’s brought to this house, and watches with amusement as Beau stands by the base of the stairs, almost bouncing in place imperceptibly with impatience. Voices start to come down the stairs, Yasha’s voice - familiar and softer - and then a louder voice with an accent he doesn’t recognize.

He’s less surprised than he should be that the unfamiliar accent seems to be coming from Fjord, as they make their way down the stairs and start to become visible in the glimpses he catches through the door. There’s a - fountain, or something, at the base of the stairs, which is… strange, but they all seem to avoid it easily enough. Yasha wraps Beauregard up in a hug as she steps through the door, and Fjord does the same a moment later.

When Yasha catches sight of him and Nott she freezes, and then smiles widely, uncharacteristically so from what he can remember of the stoic woman. “Caleb,” she says softly, with no small amount of wonder. “Nott. It is - good to see you, what is -”

Fjord steps up, and catches sight of them now too, his eyes widening. “What the -” He turns to Beau, gesturing towards the room. “Beau, what in gods name - we’ve only been gone two weeks!”

She puts her hands up, laughing under her breath. “They just showed up yesterday, figured it would be easier to tell you now rather than force a message out through Jester and try an explain like that. C’mon and sit, we’ve all got some explaining to do.”

He doesn’t miss how Fjord pinches at his arm, like he’s expecting this to be a dream. He looks - different. The gray streak in his hair is more prominent, now, and his armor is different - it suits him, what looks almost like algae creeping up the leg and shoulder plates. There’s a symbol around his neck, on a thick chain - the Wildmother, he realizes. New, or something that he had hidden when he had known them, back in the empire. Smart of him to do so, he thinks. He knows all too well what happens to believers of forbidden gods.

Nott glances at TJ and Luc, who are borderline wrestling on the edge of the couch. “Can we - I doubt that these ah. Explanations are the most suitable for children, so can someone -”

Yeza follows her gaze, and gets up in a flurry of motion, taking the two kids by the hands. “We’ll go explore outside a bit, yeah? You can clue me in later.”

He presses a quick kiss to the top of Nott’s hair and hurries out of the room, Luc and TJ following him behind, already starting up a chant about - something about rocks? Or trees?

They must have made it up yesterday.

With them gone, Beau’s face turns more serious, and she gestures at them. “Right, so - Fjord, Yasha, obviously we know Caleb and Nott, but that halfling and the tiny kid are her husband and son, Yeza and Luc. The others are ah -” she grimaces, “Sorry, I’m not the best at names. Can you reintroduce yourselves?”

“Astrid, Eodwulf, and Essek,” he points out in turn. “My - um. My friends. It’s a long story, but I suppose we - um.”

He sits forward more, and Astrid lays a hand on his knee, a solid point of contact.

“Do you want us to go first? Or - shall you?” He gestures weakly between Beau and Fjord, trying for a smile and missing by a mile.

Beau nods, elbowing Fjord gently, and he elbows her back. “Not that I’m not willing to go first, but what exactly are we explaining?” He hisses out of the corner of his mouth, and Beau rolls her eyes.

“Dude, it’s been like - six months since we last saw each other. We’re explaining what happened in that time, obviously. And - boy, Caleb, you guys left at such a _terrible_ time, let me tell you. Like - the day after you guys went back toward Zadash, we were ambushed by fucking slave traders in the middle of the night - The Iron Shepherds, a group of fucking assholes from Shady Creek Run - and they -” she swallows, glancing at Jester. “They took Jester, Fjord, and Yasha. Me and Mollymauk were - we were the only ones left. We… it took a few weeks to figure out where they had taken them, and to try and attack and get them back. That’s uh - actually where we met Caduceus, on a more positive note.”

Caduceus raises a hand and rumbles out a greeting. He’s tall enough that even sitting on the couch, his legs are almost jackknifed to his chest, but he doesn’t look uncomfortable.

“His family lives on a shrine to the Wildmother - it’s a graveyard, in the Savalirwood, but he ended up joining us to try and get them back. Along with Keg, and Nila - you probably would have liked them, but they stayed up in the north, didn’t follow us like Caduceus did. We ended up getting Jessie and Fjord and Yasha back, but it was - it was hard. Molly literally died, at some point, we barely got him out. It hit all of us hard.”

Caleb eyes Jester, who’s gone still, face pale, her freckles standing out in dark spots of purple as she stares at her own clasped hands. Watches as she traces scars around her wrist, the outline of shackles.

He meets Beau’s eyes in a rare moment of contact. “I - I am _so_ sorry that we - that we left. I didn’t - we couldn’t have known,” he starts, the horror he’s feeling evident in his tone, but Beau shakes her head.

“It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know, they probably would have taken them with or without you guys there. Probably would have taken you, too. I don’t - we don’t blame you for leaving.”

Fjord pats Beau’s shoulder and takes over from there.

“We left back towards Zadash at that point, stayed a few weeks, did some more shit for the Gentleman. Hung out with Pumat a lot, honestly. He and Caduceus really hit it off. But - eventually - we had enough hints towards something larger going on to push us towards the coast, based off a letter we had found in the slaver’s hideout that depicted that same crystal I - ah - ingested, if you remember that. We set off towards Nicodranas.”

Jester perks up, her tail moving again as she stops grasping at the phantom memory of chains around her wrists. “My mama lives down there, you know, so we got to see her, and it was very exciting, but then we - well, we were trying to talk to this Marius guy because we thought he might know something, but then the people on this ship, like, they attacked us? So we accidentally kidnapped him, and kidnapped the ship, and then we had to flee the city on the ship because technically we stole it, so we were like pirates, you know?”

Caleb blinks.

That was - unexpected.

Fjord sighs. “Yeah, we - uh. Kind of were pirates, for a bit. Ended up getting boarded by actual pirates, because we had stolen their ship - Avantika and her crew - and we learned what the whole thing was with the crystal, and my powers. Turns out it was - well.” He swallows, uncomfortably, and reaches a hand up to touch at the symbol around his neck. “I was a sailor, when I was younger, up until the point that my ship exploded, and I drowned. But something saved me, saved my life, but in exchange - I was linked to it. A creature called Uk’otoa.”

“Uk’otoa - Uk’otoa - Uk’otoa,” the other people around him echo, and he laughs bitterly. “It was - a creature born of the betrayer gods, some sort of demi-god. A serpent. The crystals were connected to it, and Avantika - she was one of its servants. We ended up sailing around with them to try and find its temples, to - look for more crystals, and use them to get more power, but we were actually just unlocking the doors to its prison. Eventually, we ended up in Darktow - it’s an island full of pirates, run by the Revelry, and the Plank King - and. Well.”

He shrinks in on himself. “A lot of - a lot of shit went down, then.”

Beau picks up the thread. “We broke into Avantika’s ship to try and steal her journals to figure out what the shit she was doing with Uk’otoa was, but it was coded, and we couldn’t figure it out. And she knew it was us, and a fight broke out - we all got our _asses_ handed to us. Fjord and Yasha were out before the fight even started, Molly got hit with some curse that literally stripped him of everything, he couldn’t talk or write or even think, didn’t even know any of us - none of us could remove that, we thought it was permanent until Yussah figured it out. Jester and Caduceus were out of commission almost as fast as Fjord and Yasha, and I - well.”

She nods at her legs with a grim look on her face. “I ran, to try and tell the Plank King what happened. Almost made it, too, but Avantika’s fucking mage hit me from behind. Some - honestly, we still don’t know what it was, but it wrecked my legs. Bad enough that we ended up having to - having to -”

She falters, and then reaches down slowly, pulling up the legs of her pants. He winces at the scarring on her left leg, tendrils of dark magic that reach down her leg like lightning, a pattern that fractures and splits to cover her leg, but her right leg -

Her right leg isn’t scarred, because her right leg isn’t there. Instead, it’s dark wood, carved intricately with runes for stability and strength, for comfort. A prosthetic, he realizes.

“It’s ironic, in a way, because that’s actually my good leg, now. Gods knows that it hurts less than the other.” She lets her pants fall back down, and crosses her legs. “The Plank King saw me get hit from behind, ended up - well, he killed Avantika for acting against the Revelry code, and for conspiring against him. But we were told to get the fuck out, and to never return.”

Yasha places a hand on her shoulder, leaning against her, and Fjord picks up the story. “We set back for Nicodranas immediately, but it took weeks to get there. We ended up picking up a stowaway, at some point - Twiggy, and there was this whole thing with a magic dimension ball but - that comes up again in a second, so I’ll leave it at that for now. She stayed with us until we hit Nicodranas, then left to go back to Port Damali. It was - getting back was hard. Most of the trip we spent trying to keep Molly from accidentally throwing himself off the boat and to keep Beau alive. But in Nicodranas - well, we got back, and we went to Yussah to try and plea for help. Honestly, it should have blown up in our faces, we were foolish, but we were desperate more than anything else. And he helped us, in exchange for the ball that Twiggy had left us. Helped end the curse on Beau, hired a healer to deal with her leg, and removed the spell on Molly.”

Beau laughs, and this time it’s brighter, less grim. “And - well, after that, we stayed in Nicodranas for a couple of weeks, but we ended up getting called in by Yussah’s butler, because the fool had disappeared into the ball for over a week - turns out it was a demiplane, created by some mage from the Age of Arcanum, specifically designed to trap wizards who tried to mess with it. We ended up having to call for help - Allura, who was Yussah’s emergency contact - and she went in with us to try and get him out. They both almost died in there, but we got them out, and in exchange… they kind of, like… we’re like their pet adventuring group? Not that we’re really adventurers, anymore, but we’re friends now, at least. Yussah let us have this place, and he and Allura built the wards and the enchantments on the house. And we’ve been living here and recovering and just - making a life for ourselves ever since.”

She sighs, and brushes a strand of hair out of her eyes from where it’s slipped from her top knot. “There are a lot more details, and some shit has happened since - We went up to Kamordah to rescue TJ from my shitty fucking parents, Jester made friends with some weird hag lady, Fjord broke his pact with Uk’otoa and started worshiping the Wildmother and revealed he had been using a fake accent this whole time, Caduceus had this whole thing with a gorgon and his family - but that’s the gist of it.”

Caleb sits back on the couch, letting Essek take his hand, the elf yawning into his elbow but still focused on the conversation. He - gods, he can just imagine what would have gone differently if he and Nott had been there, but in the end, it might be better that they weren’t. The rest of the Nein certainly handled themselves well, and - well. He had other people to protect.

Beau looks at him, and he draws breath - to start explaining, to stutter through his own story - but Eodwulf interrupts him. “Not to be rude, but before Caleb starts explaining our side of things - can we ask about the wards?”

Fjord jerks in his chair, glancing towards Eodwulf, and then eyes Caleb. “Oh - of course, of course. I know most of the details, if not how it works - Yussah explained it to me, when he and Allura keyed us into them. The house was, it was owned by another mage, years ago - he moved to Vasselheim to take up an advisory position within the church of the Archeart, and so left this place abandoned, but he gave the house to Yussah to hold onto. And when we decided to settle down, Yussah let us all move in here. The wards are, like you probably saw, accessed through that heart stone buried under the front gate, but you have to be keyed into them already to use them like that, to let guests in and stuff. The actual keying in process was done in a runic circle beneath the foundations of the main house - it’s accessed through a staircase in the root cellar - it’s this massive circle of standing blue quartz that Allura carved all our names into, to add us on as keepers of the house. We can do that for you guys, too, if you end up staying here.”

Caleb blinks. Even that was more information than he was expecting, and the idea of being tied to this place like that - to be encoded in the runestones of the building -

He hasn’t had that kind of permanence in a very long time.

“The wards are powered through that circle, and this place sits on the conjunction of two - what’s the word, like… layed lines? Leylines? You would know better than me - but those power the wards and the circle. As you probably noticed, it blocks anyone who isn’t invited in from seeing or going beyond the walls, and that extends through the earth and in the air, too, in a sphere around the center of the property. Allura says they also block scrying magic, but not sending magic, and it blocks teleportation outside of accessing the teleportation circle upstairs, which was only recently changed to have a different key or something, so only a few people have access to it. I think only Yussah, Allura, and Pumat actually know how to get in here.”

This might be the safest place Caleb’s ever been. Gods, and they block scrying -

He’s further from the eyes of the assembly than he’s ever been. He can be safe, here. They can all be safe here.

And he owes them an explanation, now.

He laughs, a bit, and drags a hand down his face. Gods.

They both certainly have stories to share.

“Thank you for - for telling us what you had been doing,” he murmurs, glancing around the room. “We - well. I cannot say that our side went any better, in some aspects, but I also guess I can’t say it went worse. I’m sorry that we weren’t there to help with what you all went through.”

Beau waves a hand. “None of that self-blame bullshit, Caleb, you had good reason to leave. We don’t blame you for leaving, you didn’t know what was going to happen. It’s not like it’s intentional.”

He grimaces at that, but nods. “Not our fault for leaving,” he echoes. Takes a deep breath, and focuses on the soft press of Essek’s hand against his back.

“Nott and I spent a few weeks lingering near Hupperdook, before she told me she had something urgent to check on in Felderwin. Mostly just lingered in an inn, tried to scrounge up enough money to get out of the empire. I will - Veth, would you like to explain this part?”

Nott nods, and folds her bony legs underneath her. “My name wasn’t always Nott,” she whispers, and wipes at her face, shaking her head. The buttons around her neck clatter with the motion. “And I’m _not_ a goblin.”

She explains, in fits and starts, how she was a halfling, once. How she had a husband, and a son, and a life. How she drowned, in that river. How her life was taken from her.

She clutches at her necklaces. “I couldn’t bear pretending to be something I wasn’t, anymore. I was too worried about them. So I convinced Caleb of the truth, and we went to Felderwin - and shit, it was a good thing we did. There were mages, there. Forcing Yeza to - Caleb knows more of the details than I do, but something with a beacon, like the ones you guys had. Forcing him to experiment on it. He’s an alchemist - one of the best, he’s incredible, but they were threatening him, and threatening Luc… we - ah. We went in the night and took both of them, and got the _fuck_ out of there. Went straight towards the border with Xhorhas, because god it couldn’t have been worse than the Empire, but then - halfway through the mountains, two months later, and - well.”

She gestures at Caleb, and he pushes down the flare of panic at the idea of what he’s about to do.

“The mages forcing Yeza to work were from the Cerberus Assembly. They are - a sort of magical oligarchy, the shadowed hand that influences the king and the governance of the empire. You all met some of them, once. Oremid Haas is a member. And - ah.” He rocks against the couch, in a half-aborted movement, and focuses on the press of Essek’s hand. “Trent Ikithon. Seeing him, there - well. If I hadn’t seen him there, I doubt I would have left the group. He - I know him. Knew him,” he corrects, and he bites his lip, sucking in a slow breath.

“My name isn’t Caleb Widogast. My parents - they named me Bren. Bren Aldric Ermendrud. And they loved me… so much. So, so much.” He wipes at his eyes. “I was born to farmers, in a tiny town near Rexxentrum. Blumenthal. I grew up there, and so did Astrid, and Eodwulf. We lived there, until - we were talented, you see. In magics. We were - all three of us - we were accepted to the academy, to the Soltryce academy, and we were so _happy_.”

He sighs, staring towards the window, at the sunlight outside. “Until we weren’t. The assembly - they have… protegees, students that they single out to join their network. Scourgers, they’re called in common. In Zemnian, we were - _Vollstruckers_. Assassins of the crown. I was fourteen when Ikithon picked the three of us out to train under him. He took us from classes, used our breaks - I didn’t go home for almost two years, but I was _proud_. He - he was training us, and I was excited to serve the crown. We all were.”

Laughs, on the side of hysteria. “He was cruel. Very cruel. We killed people. He made us do that. Taught us to kill, and torture, taught us magic that no person should know, let alone children. He - he -”

He can’t tell them everything. His memories are hard enough for himself to deal with, let alone sharing that burden with his friends. But this - they should know. They need to know.

He rolls his sleeve up, and starts unwinding the bandages around his arms. “He experimented on us,” he says, lowly, arms now bare and displaying scars, worn down by time but stark against his skin. “Put crystals in our skin, to try and make us stronger. He hurt us.”

Swallows. “He hurt us a lot.”

“But we - we thought we were doing the right thing, you know? We trusted him. He was our Master, our teacher. And when we were older - I was - I was seventeen -”

He stops. He can’t - he can’t, he can’t, he can’t, not now, not now.

Pinches his eyes shut, and breathes. In, and out. In and out.

A bird sings outside.

“He made us do something. I can’t - I can’t talk about it. Not now. But I broke. I couldn’t handle it, and when I broke - he cast something, or did something, or my memories corrupted themselves somehow through his influence. I spent the next eleven years broken and put away, like a toy on a shelf. He kept me alive, but little - little else. Eventually someone helped me, and I escaped, but that was five years ago. I realized what he had done, that he had twisted my memories, charmed me into helping him, and I’ve been running from him ever since.”

He nods at Astrid and Wulf. “In the mountains between the Empire and Xhorhas, we ran into them. My old friends, my old partners, my friends who had never broken the way I did. I honestly - really, for a moment, I had been sure they had been sent to kill me.”

Astrid squeezes his knee again, and jumps into the conversation. “Ikithon is dead, now. We… months ago, we had realized what had been happening. It’s a long, and complicated story, but we started working against the Assembly from the inside, slowly. I killed Ikithon myself. Poisoned him, and took his place in disguise, to tilt the aims of the assembly back towards peace. Eodwulf - well. Wulf, would you and Essek rather explain this part?”

Essek yawns into his elbow again, but sits up straighter, nodding his head slightly.

“Right. Thank you, Astrid,” he murmurs. He meets Beau’s gaze.

“As you can probably surmise, I am from the Dynasty, originally. I once served at the hand of the Queen herself. But I -” he hums, tilting his head. “I was foolish, and I was young. I stole one of those beacons that you also know of, and I gave it to the Assembly. I was… frustrated, with the religious leanings of the dynasty. I wanted more. I wanted knowledge, wanted power. I was selfish. I was guilty. And I - I suffered for it, greatly. When Yeza disappeared, taking his research with him, the Assembly needed someone to blame, and I was… I suppose I was _convenient_ ,” he hisses. “They took me. I was with them for forty days,” he says, eyes too bright in his face, contrasted by the dull purple bags beneath them. “They tortured me for information I didn’t have. They hurt me. I’m not - I’m not the same as I was, before that. Less foolish, at least, but… they were… cruel. But one of them… one of them was never anything but kind.”

Eodwulf coughs into his hand, and then takes over, leaning into Essek. “I was taken from active duty years ago. Too many cloudkill spells to the lungs, a curse gone awry, and I can’t - I get sick easily. I can’t fight as well as I used to, but I knew too much to be let go, so I was assigned to work in the interrogation facilities. To care for the prisoners, in between sessions. To keep them alive.” He shakes his head. “It was - a punishment, it was horrific, but I still thought I was doing the right thing. I tried to help them as much as I could, but - no one comes out alive from that place. No one makes it out. But when Astrid - when she realized what Ikithon had done to us - she killed him, and took his place, and I - I took Essek, and then when Astrid let Ikithon’s death be public, we ran. Tried to make it to the Graying Wildlands, actually, but the teleportation went awry. We ended up in the mountains, and spent a day or two just wandering around, trying to figure out what to do, and well - that’s when we ran into Caleb and the others.”

Caleb laughs, and grins slightly at the memory. “It certainly was… a reunion. But once we got the fear of killing each other out of the way, we joined up as a larger group, and we’ve been travelling together ever since. Took the better part of two months to get here, to this point. Hit a lot of… snags, in the road. We’re all worse for wear. But - ah. Very happy to be here. _Very_ happy to be here.”

The silence in the room is deafening. So many threads, so many stories, that have woven together to bring them all to this point.

It’s Beau who breaks it, glancing between Essek and Astrid. “You convinced the king to end the war? To give back the beacons they had?”

Astrid nods, mouth set in a grim line. “It took a lot of maneuvering, but I tilted the scales. The war was causing undue suffering for people they never should have gotten involved in the first place. Politics had to be put aside for the people. And after the Dynasty revealed that one of the beacons thought to be lost in the attack on Zadash had been returned by a neutral party - well, we had bargaining chips, and so did they. Peace was hard to manufacture, but hopefully it will be easier to maintain.”

“That’s… the object we obtained from the sewers, yes? The dodecahedron? The beacon? We - we actually gave that to Allura,” Fjord says, slowly. “She wanted to study it - we never heard anything else, we didn’t know what it was, but I’m glad it worked out?”

Essek’s eyes dart over to Caleb, and nods, slowly. “Yes, Caleb told me in part about how you ended up with it. In all honesty - when he learned it had been returned, with no mention of the Mighty Nein, he thought you had all either lost it or - or. Well.”

Caleb sighs, and curls into himself in the couch, staring down at the carpet. “It seems we both came to the wrong conclusion during our separation.” He looks up, and takes in the room.

“But I’m - as I said, we’re happy to be here. Happy that you all made it. That we all made it.”

That same bird sings again outside, and it feels louder. Brighter.

He feels the warm wash of sunlight against his face, and he is so glad to be out of the dark.

“Yeah, Caleb.” Beau leans across the space between the seats, and lays a hand on his knee, across Astrid’s fingers. “We’re glad you’re all here too.”

They scatter slowly, after that, the tide of storytelling coming to an end. It’s exhausting, to share his story - to listen to all of their stories - like that, but he feels lighter, in a way. Like he’s let some of the weight he carries fall away.

Yeza and Luc and TJ tumble in soon later, and the house returns to a bustle of activity, Fjord and Yasha diving in to help relocate some of the spare furniture stored in the guest room upstairs to their new house. In a matter of hours, they have rugs and tables and chairs, plates, and cups for their own smaller kitchen, and it looks less empty. He can already imagine how they’ll decorate this space - their books, filling the empty shelves, inkwells and quills on the desk, an alchemy set in the corner - but for now, it is a blank canvas, waiting for them to fill it.

By the time the sun’s set and they’re shoved in around the table, eating dinner and telling stories of a different kind, it feels like the warm sun outside has lit itself in his bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry about the wait! i'll try and get chapters out faster from now on. also sorry that this chapter is mostly just. exposition! it had to be done, and now I can really dive into the happy slice of life fluff. please leave a comment if you enjoyed!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so sorry for disappearing since may, i've had this chapter half-written for months and finally had the energy to work more on it today. i can't promise more frequent updates, but i'm going to try! this is a shorter chapter than the previous few, but hopefully still nice!

“Right, then, so these are the west gardens - look out for the bees, Caduceus put all of his hives over here,” Jester bounces on her heels, and points at the collection of short wooden towers. “He like… talks to them, so they shouldn’t sting you but you should still probably avoid like, annoying them and stuff. And then over here, behind the house, that’s where the stream loops around and we made a pool…” She ducks under a tree branch, and continues on, the rest of them trailing behind her like confused ducklings.

“Right, so the stream was like, not that deep, yeah? But we made a dam and so now this part is like, me deep, so we can go swimming and stuff in cold water for when it’s hot, which, it hasn’t been too hot yet because it’s still like spring and stuff but I think it will be nice once it is! Warmer, I mean. I think this is where we’ll have picnics, too, in the summer, and maybe set off some fireworks if we can get them in from Hupperdook - You remember that Caleb? Wouldn’t that be fun?”

He nods, speechless in the face of Jester’s enthusiasm, and keeps nodding as Jester plows ahead. “And then we can invite Pumat, and Allura and Yussah and his butler, too, and oh maybe - _maybe_ even my Mama, if she wants to come! A big party, with all our family and friends, and we can have pastries!” She flings her hands up into the air, and turns to face them, grinning brightly.

Her grin soon fades to a simple smile as she reels in some of the exuberance. “But, yeah, this is pretty much the west side and the back of the house. The woods go out for a little bit, up to the fence, and then extend for miles beyond that. It’s fun to be out here around noon, the sun shines through the stained glass in the hall and makes patterns in the grass. Good for napping, too.”

Mollymauk huffs out a laugh, from the back of the group, and slips up to the front, feet bare against the dewy grass. “Jester, darling, as fun as this tour is, maybe it’s time to head back inside? We’ve been walking around for almost -” He glances at Caleb, an eyebrow raised inquisitively, and Caleb discreetly signs, “Thirty-six minutes.”

“- Over half an hour. Shall we head back inside and let them settle in more? I’m sure they can discover the _wonders_ of the mud patch on the eastern wall by themselves.”

“Oh, but _Molly_ ,” Jester whines, and then she takes a look at them, at the lines pinching Caleb’s brow, and she smiles, a little too brightly. “No, no, you’re right. Let’s go bother Fjord.”

Mollymauk grins, teeth bared. “Let’s.”

He takes her by the arm, and leads her back inside, flashing a smile at them as they leave, and Caleb lets himself relax, forcibly rolling his shoulders back and unclenching his jaw. He likes Jester, he had missed her greatly, but she is… a lot, right now.

This is all a lot right now.

The grounds of the house are beautiful, and the animals that Jester has dragged them around and introduced them to seem well-taken care of. The fields are fresh and ready for planting, some already in progress, and overall, it’s… it’s nice.

It reminds him of home.

He’s not sure if he’s ready to think about that, just yet.

“Can we go back inside?”

Essek sidles up to him, cloak drawn tightly over his head, his eyes barely visible. “It’s too bright out here.”

The sun is covered by clouds, but honestly, he agrees. After days and weeks of rain and hiding in the shadows, it is… disconcerting to be in broad daylight.

“Of course, of course.” He’s been memorizing the layout as they walk, and he can see the backdoor of their portion of the house past the stained-glass hallway, and he leads them in, toeing off his boots by the door.

Imagine that, he thinks idly. Staying in a place where he cares enough not to track mud onto the floors.

Veth and Yeza disappear upstairs, Luc in tow, and he hears them unpack, Veth arranging her collections with the clatter of buttons and stones.

He lets himself sag, sitting on the worn couch that Fjord and Yasha had hauled in, and holds his arms out for Essek, who collapses into him, head leaning into the space between his neck and shoulder.

He addresses Astrid and Wulf. “Should we try and head into town, today? Beau offered. For, ah -” he inclines his head towards Essek, and the drow hums, lifting his head.

“I would… appreciate it.” Essek rubs at his eyes. “I feel rather useless, like this.”

Caleb tentatively tangles his fingers in Essek’s hair, and the other man sags against him, eyes dipping closed.

“You aren’t useless, Essek.” Eodwulf sits next to them, one arm coming to wrap around Essek’s shoulders, Astrid slipping in to sit on Caleb’s other side. “After everything you went through -” Wulf’s voice cuts off, choked, and he muffles something crossed between a sob and a cough in her elbow. “- After everything, I don’t think anyone would blame you if you _were_ , but you aren’t. You are valued. To me.”

Wulf looks uncomfortable but earnest, face more open than it ever was when they were children, and Essek meets his eyes with a soft smile.

“Thank you, Eodwulf,” he murmurs, syllables tripping out of Essek’s mouth.

It’s a few hours past breakfast, now - at least when they ate breakfast, because he knows that Beau and some of the others only ate around ten - but still an hour or so before Caduceus had told them to expect lunch, and so Caleb lets himself settle against the couch and his friends, closing his eyes.

Just a few minutes of rest, he promises himself, and he unclenches his jaw, relaxes his shoulders.

Just a few minutes.

He doesn’t end up falling asleep, but it’s a near thing. He spends the time thinking about ways to help Essek, instead - he thinks, if he transmutes glass and then colors it, that he can at least protect the drow’s eyes from the sun, and when combined with a cloak, or maybe a parasol - he can work out a way for him to be comfortable outside, to be comfortable in sunlight. A personal moveable area of darkness would be preferable, but he’s not sure if he can manage that with what magics he knows. If he had access to the Soltryce libraries, _maybe_ , access to the libraries in Rosohna that Essek’s described to him, but -

Well. Both of those are places that he - that they - are no longer welcome.

He misses libraries. Misses the long hours that he spent with his friends, as children, flipping through pages and covering their hands with ink as they took notes, as they learned, as they grew. The last time he had been able to spend hours just reading, researching… he thinks it was with Beauregard, all those months ago, in Zadash. He hasn’t been able to since then.

The village near here is too small for a library, he’s sure. But… maybe, maybe the city that Beau had mentioned - he can read Elvish, so even if the city only has books in their own languages, he could probably at least read _something_ -

He feels someone rub his shoulder, and he blinks his eyes open out of his musings to Wulf staring at him, one eyebrow cocked.

“Back with us, Caleb?”

Caleb rubs his eyes, and glances around, noting that the room is darker, curtains drawn across all the windows, Essek and Astrid gone off somewhere.

Ah. He did sleep.

He drags his eyes back to Eodwulf, who’s still just looking at him, patient.

Wordlessly, he holds his arms out, and Wulf rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, okay.”

Wulf picks him up, arms wrapping around his shoulders, and spins him before putting him down. Caleb blinks wearily once he’s back on his feet, but smiles softly at Eodwulf, and ducks in for another hug.

“Softie,” he murmurs into the soft wool of Wulf’s sweater, and Wulf chuckles, the low noise resonating through his chest.

“Like you’re any different.”

Wulf pulls away from him and twitches open the curtains, the golden light of the afternoon pouring into the room once again. “You slept right through lunch, we didn’t want to wake you, but Caduceus left out some bread and cheese for you in the kitchen if you’re hungry.”

Caleb hums, and follows Wulf as the other man starts to dart around the living room, watching with soft amusement as he fluffs pillows, rearranges the worn blanket on the couch, pushes in the chairs of the kitchen table. He’s always known that behind the sometimes-hard exterior, Wulf was… well, he’s domestic. He’s glad to see that that hasn’t worn away with years of time and trauma.

“Where’s Astrid and Essek?” He says, dropping into the chair left open at the table. The bread is good, he discovers. Still warm.

He resists the urge to shove his fingers into it.

Calm in Eodwulf’s voice. Nothing’s wrong then. Good. “They went to check out the rest of the main house with Fjord, though by now they’re probably just being entertained by whatever stories your friends have been concocting.”

Caleb cracks a small smile, and finishes his bread with a small sigh, his stomach turning slightly. He should… probably eat more.

Shoulds, probablys, he thinks wryly. He knows he isn’t going to.

It’s - hard. To not treat each meal he will eat as if it will be his last for a long while. Logically, he doesn’t have to hide the cheese away, to save it for some starving night. He doubts Beauregard would let him starve. But -

Just in case, he promises himself, and he wraps the cheese in a clean cloth, tucking it away in one of his many pockets.

Just in case.

Eodwulf watches him do it, and doesn’t say anything, but there’s a knowing look in his eye. He pulls out a chair and sits at the table, one arm reaching out and placing his hand flat on the wood.

Caleb lays his own palm across his, and twines their fingers together, resulting in a small smile from Eodwulf.

“Are we staying here, then?” Wulf asks, voice hushed, and Caleb squeezes his hand.

“I think… I think we are. This is - Luc, Veth, Yeza, they deserve stability. They deserve a better life. And even with us here… it is safe, here.”

Caleb knocks on the wood of the table with his free hand. Wryly, he murmurs, “Not to jinx us. But it would be hard for anyone to find us here.”

Eodwulf nods, and leans back, his thumb swiping lazily over Caleb’s knuckles. “There is no reason for the Assembly to come looking for us. They might, still, I can’t predict what they do, but with the new Archmage… our existence is at least slightly less tenuous.”

Caleb hums. Lets himself lean into the table, lets his head loll down to be propped up by his free hand.

“I certainly hope you are right,” he whispers, and Eodwulf grips him tighter.

For a long moment, they are both silent, and he listens to the birds singing in the light of the afternoon sun.

“You saw that temple in town, as we rode in?” Eodwulf’s voice changes, brighter, less miserable about the past that will always haunt them.

“I did, yes. I didn’t see to what god - or, well, gods, I suppose. The town is small enough for that.”

Smaller towns are either - well, in the Empire at least, only the smallest villages would have no temple at all. Most would be dedicated to a single god, whatever the patron of that village was, as long as it was an approved deity, though some would have a single temple dedicated to multiple gods, smaller shrines present in the temple and kept by the community. Home -

His home -

Blumenthal had been the former, dedicated to the Dawnfather, though he knew few people that actively worshiped him. It was hard, to have faith in gods, when every waking moment of your youth was spent growing up under observation and threat from the crown. If there wasn’t a good enough harvest. If you strayed too much while working. If you took too many breaks. If you didn’t pay lip service to the crown when passing guards.

As a child, he hadn’t prayed much. His parents were religious, but he couldn’t -

He doesn’t remember if they prayed to the Dawnfather, or to some other god, or to some unapproved being. He’s not sure if he wants to know. If them being heretics when he -

When. When he -

Eodwulf’s hand leaves his grasp and lands on his shoulder, and Caleb blinks forcefully, shoving the thought out of his mind.

His parents were religious. He was not.

“Do you think it was a temple to your Matron?” He asks, tapping Eodwulf’s arm with a thankful look, and Eodwulf pulls his hand back.

“Not sure, honestly. I felt no real pull to it, but if it’s just smaller shrines then I might have just been unable to feel it at all.”

Caleb hums, and forcibly reorients himself, taking in the windows, the noise, the fresh air from the cracked-open doorway.

“We can look into it today, if you would like? I was planning on asking Beauregard to accompany us into town, to go to the apothecary. Ah. For Essek. She offered, yesterday…” he trails off, and Eodwulf takes his hand again, his calloused fingers rough against the soft skin of his knuckles.

“That would be nice, _liebling.”_ Wulf muses, and he stands, dropping a kiss on Caleb’s head. “We should go before it gets too close to sunset.”

——————

Astrid and Essek are, as promised, being entertained by the combined forces of Jester and Mollymauk in the main house, the two of them weaving some elaborate story involving a massive turtle and fireworks, and he tunes them out with familiar practice, letting himself trace a path around the room, before sitting on the couch near them. He’s fully awake again, but the room is comfortable, and the company is nice. He might as well let himself drift for a while.

It’s close to three when Beauregard stumbles in from outside, the cuffs of her overalls covered in mud, but she’s grinning widely. “Caleb, hey, I’m about to head into town. Coming with?”

He nods, brushing invisible dirt off his trousers, and when he stands Astrid and Essek rise also, Eodwulf wandering back in from where he had been lingering around the kitchen with Caduceus making idle chatter.

He guesses they’re all going, then.

“Hm… if two of you don’t mind walking, we can take one cart. Otherwise, we should take two,” Beau says, and she whips around back toward the door, her braid swinging. She’s kept the under shave, but the back has grown longer since he saw her last. It looks nice.

They end up taking just the one cart, Eodwulf and Astrid walking, and he drives with Essek dozing off in the bag, the air warm with afternoon sun.

Town grows closer over the horizon the longer they ride, and before four they reach it, light glancing off thick windowpanes and roof tiles, making him squint against it. Essek is facing backward, woken up by the bustle of the people making their way about their days, and he reaches back to pat at his head silently.

They leave the cart and horses at the stable near the Inn, and Beau leads them across the street to the bakery he had spotted earlier, stepping inside for a moment and returning laden with a massive basket of breads and pastries that she enlists Eodwulf to carry while they walk to the apothecary. They pass the temple on the way, and up-close he can tell that it’s to many gods. He’s able to pick out the symbols of the Matron, the Archeart, the Dawnfather, the Wildmother - he spots what looks to be a symbol he’s only seen Jester wear, and he muffles a smile into his scarf. Many gods, in this town.

He thinks that they can be happy here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been shipping blumenkrew since episode 18, and so all the new people coming in and seeing the value of the ship is making me SO HAPPY!!!!!!!!!!  
> again, sorry for not posting for... literally months, brain is Broke but i am. trying.

**Author's Note:**

> me, adding this onto my wip list: this is a coping mechanism. i am coping
> 
> all depicitions of brainweirds and chronic pain seen in this fic are, in general, taken from my own experiences, but if you see something that sounds or feels off please feel free to tell me! narcolepsy mentions and descriptions are run by my best friend before they get into the fic, but that is a condition that i do not experience so i'm just trying my best!
> 
> matthew mercer described essek as sleeping or being tired on multiple occasions, and i KNOW he just forgot that elves don't sleep but i'm taking that concept and running with it
> 
> and so: soft healing farm recovery au, with a heavy heaping of worldbuilding, plot divergences, and other shaninigans, is a go! please leave a kudos if you enjoyed, and a comment if you want me to love you forever


End file.
